Wordsworth - Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural

[nomadman]

I've been reading a bit of Caldecott recently, having purchased "Not Exactly Ghosts" and "Fires Burn Blue". Nothing earth-shattering so far, just a collection of well crafted, well-written tales in which the supernatural plays a peripheral or sometimes wholly imaginary role. I rather like Caldecott's fictional SE Asian country of Kongea: a very effective setting for some of the better tales with its steaming jungles, superstitious natives and oversized fauna. And very well-realized, given Caldecott's experiences.

But, aside from one tale -- Grey Brothers -- I'm finding most of the pieces unmemorable. Hopefully that'll change when I read his, supposedly, best piece: Christmas Reunion.

 

[GOLLUM]

I've got some of those Wwordsworth classics, they're good introductions to the Genre at a reasonable price.

Sadly time does not allow me to list for you all some of the more worthwhile ones....GRRR..

 

[j d worthington]

I had a hard time getting through The House by the Churchyard and ended up doing a lot of skimming. Too many inconsequential characters doing too many inconsquential things. LeFanu couldn't seem to decide what kind of novel he was writing. I think there is a very nice novella or short novel of "mystery and the supernatural" in there, but it takes too much digging to get at it. The rest reminded me of something written by, say, Mrs. Gaskell, but not nearly as entertaining.

The best parts were the descriptions of hauntings at the Tiled House, with the ghostly hand. But I'd read that before, in an anthology somewhere, and it worked much better on its own.

I really expected better from a writer whose work I generally admire.

Interesting. I'll admit I had to readjust for this one -- it is somewhat rambling at times, and certainly not as single-minded as his later novels tended to be -- yet I found that it all came together rather well, myself.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I agree that a lot of characters I didn't think would be important had their part to play in the climactic events near the end, but LeFanu still tried my patience by taking far too long to get there and tossing in too many pointless diversions along the way.

The Right Hand of Doom finally arrived, and I'm reading that now.

 

[Fried Egg]

I've just got M.R. James "Collected Ghost Stories".

Only read the first three stories and they are ok. Hoping to be more impressed than I am by the time I finish the collection.

 

[j d worthington]

I've just got M.R. James "Collected Ghost Stories".

Only read the first three stories and they are ok. Hoping to be more impressed than I am by the time I finish the collection.

James isn't to everyone's taste, but I think you'll find plenty of very good tales there. And he's another that seems to grow with rereadings....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

JD, you asked for my opinion of the Gilchrist book in the February reading thread, but this seems like the best place to answer you.

I finished it very soon after it arrived, and I'm afraid that it will give you a far too accurate picture of my housekeeping if I tell you that I misplaced it soon after reading it, and have only just found it now.

But on to my impressions ... I think Gilchrist was a fabulously talented writer, and can only wish he had done more in the gothic/supernatural line. Some of his stories, like The Basilisk, I found wonderfully evocative and eerie. Some, like The Lost Mistress, are marvelous character studies. In some of the stories, however, the melodrama is a bit absurd. In The Stone Dragon, why should Rachel die for love when she hardly knows the man? In A Night on the Moor why does Sophy mischievously incite the jealousy of her already dangerous husband? Both these characters come across as puppets invented for the sole purpose of acting out the author's obsession with love and death.

And by the time I had read halfway through the collection, this same obsession has become so very marked, it was usually possible to guess the end of the story on the first page. So much for suspense. (Nevertheless, I particularly enjoyed The Noble Courtesan.) Sometimes the plotting is so loose and disjointed, it seems like the premise has hardly been thought-out at all. As a result, I can't help suspecting that all of his stories were written during brief periods of intense inspiration -- sometimes to their benefit, and sometimes otherwise.

It would be interesting to know what it was in Gilchrist's own life that created such a close association between love/death and friendship/betrayal. Unfortunately, unlike some of the other books in this series, there is no introduction, and so no insights into the writer's life or career. All we have is the briefest possible note on the back cover, mentioning the author's interest in topography and his stories set in the Derbyshire Peak District.

 

[ravenus]

I've just got M.R. James "Collected Ghost Stories".

Only read the first three stories and they are ok. Hoping to be more impressed than I am by the time I finish the collection.

MRJ's stories are IMO more comfortable than awe-inspiring reading.

 

[j d worthington]

MRJ's stories are IMO more comfortable than awe-inspiring reading.

Hmmm. Not sure I agree with that one, especially in the case of such things as "Count Magnus" or "The Mezzotint".... Though perhaps "awe" isn't quite what he evokes as much as a definite chill. His stories are very carefully crafted, and it's a quiet, creeping sort of horror, often at the implications of what's happening (or has happened) rather than a direct confrontation with the raw emotion. I think Lovecraft summed it up well when he said: "He is an artist in incident and arrangement rather than in atmosphere, and reaches the emotions more often through the intellect than directly. This method, of course, with its occasional absences of sharp climax, has its drawbacks as well as its advantages; and many will miss the thorough atmospheric tension which writers like Machen are careful to build up with words and scenes. But only a few of the tales are open to the charge of tameness. Generally the laconic unfolding of abnormal events in adroit order is amply sufficient to produce the desired effect of cumulative horror."

Teresa: Thank you. I'll definitely have to pick up the book and see what I think of them; but I apprecaite the caveat up front. I know nothing about Gilchrist's life at this point, but if I find anything out, I'll let you know....

 

[Fried Egg]

Well, I've just read M.R. James' story "The Ash Tree" and that one certainly did send a chill down my spine. Particularly, when the tom cat slipped into the hollow of the tree and the subsequent events to the end of the story. Definitely my favourite one so far.

 

[brsrkrkomdy]

Hmmm. Not sure I agree with that one, especially in the case of such things as "Count Magnus" or "The Mezzotint".... Though perhaps "awe" isn't quite what he evokes as much as a definite chill. His stories are very carefully crafted, and it's a quiet, creeping sort of horror, often at the implications of what's happening (or has happened) rather than a direct confrontation with the raw emotion. I think Lovecraft summed it up well when he said: "He is an artist in incident and arrangement rather than in atmosphere, and reaches the emotions more often through the intellect than directly. This method, of course, with its occasional absences of sharp climax, has its drawbacks as well as its advantages; and many will miss the thorough atmospheric tension which writers like Machen are careful to build up with words and scenes. But only a few of the tales are open to the charge of tameness. Generally the laconic unfolding of abnormal events in adroit order is amply sufficient to produce the desired effect of cumulative horror."

MRJ's stories aren't exactly what you would call "cozy" or "comfortable". The settings may seem mundane on the surface, but it's hell that lurks underneath that you'd have to worry about. There's nothing benign about those spectral forces at work. Awe inspiring? Not quite. More like quiet chills. The awe inspiring ones would go to Hodgson, Blackwood, and Lovecraft.

 

[The Shining Enigma]

I would like to second Gilchrist as being a fine writer, and highly effective in demonstrating growing madness amongst individuals who are well-acquainted, as well as with unknown and enigmatic people and phantoms. His stories are decidely different from many included in this Wordsworth series, and I'd recommend them as mostly weird stories, rather than those ghostly tales of the traditional victorian brand. I wonder if Lovecraft ever heard of him, in any case, he was never mentioned in the essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature' (to my knowledge). As a good few of them rely on romatic situations (so as to provide the front for the horror), this is probably not surprising.

I have a good few of the other books at present, 'Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Stories' being one of them; so far this hasn't been remarkable, but as M.R. James held him in such high esteem, no doubt it's worthwhile going through them.

I am wondering, is the collection of tales from the Benson brothers any good?

 

[j d worthington]

S.E.: While HPL didn't particularly care for romance in what he read, neither did he avoid it, as can be seen by tremendous amounts of what he did recommend in SHiL, where the romantic element plays a large part. (For that matter, in his critical writings for the amateur press, he showed a keen critical awareness of the potential of such writings, encouraging verisimilitude in handling the subject, and a surprising degree -- given the popular conception of the man -- of sound advice on the matter, fictionally speaking.)

Most likely the reason he doesn't mention Gilchrist is the same as that for Le Fanu, as well as several other of the Victorians and before: a lot of this was hard to obtain or simply not available, so he was frequently simply unaware of it.

As for the stories by the other Benson brothers... hard to say. I've not read the collection myself, though I'd like to get my hands on it soon; but from the stories by them that I have read, they were quite uneven: when good, often very good, when not... not really bad so much as lacklustre...

 

[Connavar]

They have two collections of Edgar Allan Poe i was very interested in. Instead of reading my library collection from 1908 who is in horrible condition plus people wrote stuff in it for school.


Are there mistakes and corrupted text in his collections too ? I liked the fresh collections that have many of his famous stories.

I hope there is nothing wrong with them.

 

[j d worthington]

They have two collections of Edgar Allan Poe i was very interested in. Instead of reading my library collection from 1908 who is in horrible condition plus people wrote stuff in it for school.


Are there mistakes and corrupted text in his collections too ? I liked the fresh collections that have many of his famous stories.

I hope there is nothing wrong with them.

That I don't know about, actually. I would think, though, that most of that has long been ironed out (save for perhaps an inadvertent slip now and again) as Poe has been considered a "standard author" for over a century now, and good critical editions of his works are fairly easy to come by; whereas HPL is only just becoming accepted as such, and REH has yet to be seen in that light, so this isn't quite the case with them....

 

[Fried Egg]

Like someone else in this thread said, you can't really go wrong for three quid a pop...

 

[Connavar]

That I don't know about, actually. I would think, though, that most of that has long been ironed out (save for perhaps an inadvertent slip now and again) as Poe has been considered a "standard author" for over a century now, and good critical editions of his works are fairly easy to come by; whereas HPL is only just becoming accepted as such, and REH has yet to be seen in that light, so this isn't quite the case with them....

So i have to hope there arent huge mistakes in them.

Or that there are other newer collections that collect his best stories.

In Fantasticfiction.co.uk i saw very few new collection most were 50-100 years old.


I wish there was a site like amazon where you could read reviews of the condtion the collections meaning people rating how good the collections are mistakes,corrupted text wise.

Speaking about HPL, i have two of his collections that i have read in this forums that they are full of mistakes so i dont dare to read them...

 

[j d worthington]

I wouldn't be particularly worried about the Poe on this score. The main thing I'm aware of when it comes to different editions of Poe is which version of a tale was used, as Poe did sometimes revise stories (more frequently poetry) over the years; but such revisions were quite minor (for instance, the verse "To One in Paradise", in which one had "dark" and another had "grey" eyes, as Poe's inamorata -- and therefore the description of the eyes -- had changed in the intervening years...).

On Tales of Mystery and Imagination... there have been numerous editions with this title, and the table of contents sometimes vary quite a bit....

 

[Connavar]

I wouldn't be particularly worried about the Poe on this score. The main thing I'm aware of when it comes to different editions of Poe is which version of a tale was used, as Poe did sometimes revise stories (more frequently poetry) over the years; but such revisions were quite minor (for instance, the verse "To One in Paradise", in which one had "dark" and another had "grey" eyes, as Poe's inamorata -- and therefore the description of the eyes -- had changed in the intervening years...).

On Tales of Mystery and Imagination... there have been numerous editions with this title, and the table of contents sometimes vary quite a bit....

The table of contents is not really a problem for me. I know which stories i want. Doesnt matter which collection i get.

Im not sure revisions is an issue specially if its Poe himself that changed things. Its not like as reader you will react to small change like the eye color thing.

When i saw this thread and the negative info about this publisher, i was worried about the collections they had of Poe.

 

[j d worthington]

In the main, the Wordsworth editions are fine; very few you need to worry about, from my understanding (or experience).