The Old "Gothic Hounds"...ongoing

[crusoe]

Algernon Blackwood
14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951

Bio from the “Literary Gothic” Page
British author, adventurer, newspaper reporter, factory owner, "psychical researcher" — Blackwood's career and interests were varied, although he is best known now as one of the foremost authors of ghost stories in the early C20, perhaps one of the best ever. His own interest in and understanding of "spiritualism" as well as of human psychology is responsible for the impressive power and effectiveness of his ghostly tales.

"The Empty House and other Ghost Stories"
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14471

I read him decades ago and still do, especially the here mentioned Short Story - Collection.

Here you’ll find more Stories by Blackwood:

http://algernonblackwood.org/
Here the WELCOME-Text of this Page:

Blackwood Stories is your source of printer-friendly publications of Algernon Blackwood's immortal writings, novels, and stories. All stories are from the public domain and are formatted for any desktop printer. Stories are downloadable in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format and sized to a letter sheet. We realize that this is anachronistic in the age of e-books and e-readers, but a few of us still enjoy reading with paper in hand. And it's not fun reading a supernatural story on a computer! So enjoy these extraordinary tales!

[masonblake]

In my opinion The Willows is a sublime example of the classic uncanny (Freud) tale.

[crusoe]

In my opinion The Willows is a sublime example of the classic uncanny (Freud) tale.

:iagree:

Do you like Blackwood ?

[crusoe]

WILKIE COLLINS

The Woman in White, The Moonstone. Once breathtaking “Open Fire Literature”, read out loud to shivering young ladies before bedtime, listened to by Port-sipping Victorians while 19th century snow covered Londen with a coat of featherwhite silence. What happened ? Nothing much, just…well, the world kept on turning. Our friend Wilkie couldn’t scare hard-boiled Chandler-Fans anymore. Lame was one of the milder judgements. I understand. The Language, the Time, the weird people, the strange customs, the Gas-Light, the Horse-Manuer, Holmes and Watson…

However, he still got his fans and I am one of them. Here’s a page with (all ?) his works:

http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/wilkie/etext/sites.htm

My Tip for upcoming Wilkie-Enthusiasts:
AFTER DARK. (Short Stories) First published in 1856.

[crusoe]

Marjorie Bowen...what can I say? In my opinion she was one of greatest
female writers who ever spun a yarn. She could write, she could (and still can)
glue ONE down to her/his divan. The times of coaches has passed but she'll live on.

***
"She was frequently told she should never have been born. She was often informed that
she was too tall, too plain, & too gawky, & should expect to live out her life as an old maid."

Read the rest of the wonderful Essay
"Rose Petals, Drops of Blood:
The Life of Marjorie Bowen, Mistress of the Macabre" by Jessica Amana Salmonson

here: http://www.violetbooks.com/bowen.html

Food for the eReader or our tired eyes:
Collected Twilight Stories
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900561.txt

One of her best Books was an attempt to write the truth about
Richard III:
"Dickon (Richard III)"
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900531.txt

[masonblake]

:iagree:

Do you like Blackwood ?

Most certainly, sublime in the genre.

[crusoe]

Alexander Huth (1838-1914)

This time your old Fairy Aunt has a special treat for all you
Gothic Hounds out there. Stop rummaging through flea-market stalls,
here's Alexander Huth's "Zoe's Revenge". Plain mad and a great read,
it tells the story of a murdered girl, whose skeleton finds use in a manekin
of a Doll-Maker. Re-animated, she's up to no good...

Excerpt:

"Peace, wife; it is only a doll," I ventured to assert. ' "Don't tell me!" cried Martha, boiling with fury.
"I don't mean to have dolls of that kind while I am mistress in the house!"
'Well, doctor, as I said, I was carrying the figure, the creature, the evil spirit, or
whatever you like to call it, into the next room, and endeavoured when there to place it on a
sofa; but it was only with the greatest difficulty that I could extricate myself from its
clutches; it would seize me again and again, holding me faster every time, until my wife,
wondering at my long absence, burst into the room, and insisted in putting an end to what
she called scandalous indecency."

***

http://manybooks.net/titles/huthaother10zoes_revenge.html

Oh,...before I forget: Check out his "Tales of the Wonder Club",

Spray a few cans of artificial snow around your chair,
light an open fire in the wastebasket and have fun with his
strange little tales.

[crusoe]

Alain-René Lesage(1668-1747) These days I amuse myself to the utmost degree with Lesage's "Devil on two Sticks".


This great Indroduction and the Novel can be
found on:

http://www.exclassics.com/devil/devlintr.htm

Introduction:Alain-René Lesage (1668-1747) was a French dramatist, poet and novelist. He is best known as the author of Gil Blas (also available on this site). The Devil on Two Sticks (Le Diable Boiteux) is an earlier work in the same vein and is also set in Spain around 1700. Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo, a Madrid gallant, accidentally frees a demon from captivity. In gratitude, the demon takes him up to a high place and makes all the roofs of Madrid transparent so he can see what is going on everywhere. The demon describes to him the people he can see, and their histories. The stories of true and false love, star-crossed lovers, robberies, duels, enslavements and liberations make up the bulk of the book, and the follies, vices and corruption of the ancien régime are mercilessly satirised in dozens of character sketches of people of every kind.

[crusoe]

BIO from : http://www.german.leeds.ac.uk/RWI/2003_04project2/Tieckbiography.html

Excerpt:

• Born: 30 May 1773 in Berlin (capital of rationalism and later became one of the main centres of the Romantic Movement).
• He attended the Friedrich-Werdersche Gymnasium, and the universities of Halle, Göttingen and Erlangen.
• 1794: returned to Berlin and decided to try and make a living as a writer.
• 1798: got married.
• A year later he settled in Jena (where the two Schlegel brother and Novalis were the leaders of the new Romantic school).
• 1797: published a collection of 'Märchen' containing Der blonde Eckbert and Der Runenberg. This was a time when Tieck was characteristically at his best.
• 1801: went to live in Dresden followed by a couple of months in Italy.
• 1817: went to England to collect materials for a work he was going to do on Shakespeare but which he never actually finished.
• 1819: resettled in Dresden.
• He had written virtually nothing for 10 years and re-emerged in 1821 with a series of 'Novellen'.
• From 1825 he was a literary adviser to the Court Theatre.
• 1841: was invited to Berlin by Friedrich Wilhelm IV. of Prussia.
• Died: 28 April 1853.

Here a Story by him in English on Gutenberg Australia:

“The Elves" was first published in volume 1 (1812) of Tieck's three-volume Phantasm. The translation into English by Thomas Carlyle first appeared in 'German Romance' (1827).

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700651h.html

GOOD HUNTING...

[crusoe]

If one attempts to write about Gothic Hounds, one Name tells it all:

E.T.A. Hoffmann

The Net is full of his works, biographical articles etc. etc. Have fun digging…

Source Bio : Wikipedia

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822), better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictitious opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and the author of the novelette The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.


Here his greatest Stories:

Weird Tales. Vol. I, by E. T. A. Hoffmann
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31377/pg31377.txt

Weird Tales, Vol. II., by E. T. A. Hoffmann
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31439/pg31439.txt

[crusoe]

F. Marion Crawford Francis Marion Crawford (August 2, 1854 – April 9, 1909) was an
American writer noted for his many novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his classic weird and fantastic stories.

Source: WIKIPEDIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion_Crawford

… check out the rest. Interesting Life.

My Tip: THE WITCH OF PRAQUE

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3816

Plot Excerpt - source:

http://necronomania.blogspot.de/2010/04/witch-of-prague-and-other-stories.html

quote:

“The Witch of Prague” is an intriguing attempt at speculative fiction, largely inspired by the new science of
hypnotism. In his exploration of this topic, Crawford rejects the “animal magnetism” theories of Mesmer and adopts an explanation based on “moral” influence. His central character, the beautiful but capricious Unorna, possesses hypnotic powers that she (and others) can’t help attributing to “superstitious” causes, hence her reputation as “the witch”.

Materialistic and reductionist science is caricatured in the bizarre figure of Keyork Arabian, an aged dwarf whose obsession with extending his own life leads to grotesque experiments with both living and dead subjects. The description of his Frankenstein-like chamber of horrors, full of dismembered remains
and semi-revivified specimens, provides one of the most straightforwardly Gothic and enjoyable sections of the novel…

unquote.

[crusoe]

His writing causes an increased bill for reading-candles...

Source: WIKIPEDIA
Arthur Machen ( 3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella "The Great God Pan" (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror (Stephen King has called it "Maybe the best horror story in the English language").


Source: http://www.litgothic.com
"The Great God Pan"
The work that shocked Victorian England when it was first published in 1890 (in the short-lived magazine Whirlwind; first book publication was 1894), it cemented in the public mind the association of Machen with the Decadence movement of Wilde et al. But the significance of this work is much larger, for it most famously articulates the mythic power that Machen so frequently sought for his work.


The Book "The Great Pan":
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/389/pg389.txt

[crusoe]

Source: http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/prest.html
13 May 1810? - 5 June 1859

Prolific English magazine editor and, primarily, writer of knock-off novels (he penned a number of lowbrow adaptations of Dickens' works) and of "penny dreadfuls," those inexpensive shocker novels of the mid C19; Prest is best known for being regarded as the author of Varney the Vampire, although he probably isn't, or at the very least isn't the sole author — the evidence is good that James Malcolm Rymer is to blame, either wholly or in part — and for creating "Sweeney Todd," the demon barber popularized in Stephen Sondheim's musical (based on the book by Hugh Wheeler, based on the 1847 melodrama by George Dibdin Pitt which was based on Prest's 1846 The String of Pearls) — though here again there are some who think Rymer may have had much more to do with creating Todd than did Prest.

Who knows...who knows, but there’s only one Varney and here you can meet him:
There are more shorter versions out there (Gutenberg), but I strongly advise the highest dosage.

Varney the Vampire, or, The feast of blood Volume 1,2 and 3.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PreVar1.html
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PreVar2.html
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PreVar3.html

And if you’re still on your feet after the above, then light another cigar and have a go at:
Vileroy; or, The Horrors of Zindorf Castle.
Where ? Here ! http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/Vileroy/Vileroy.html

I leave you alone now...

[crusoe]

...was an English cleric and author. As a chaplain of King's College, Cambridge, he was a colleague and contemporary of the scholar and author M. R. James, and a regular member of the select group to whom James delivered his famous annual Christmas Eve reading of a ghost story composed specially for the occasion. Swain collaborated with James on topical skits for amateur performance in Cambridge, but he is best known for the collection of ghost stories he published in 1912, entitled The Stoneground Ghost.

The Stoneground Ghost Tales (W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, Cambridge, 1912) is a collection of nine short stories set in and around a church and parish on the edge of England's fen country. The protagonist, the Rector of Stoneground, the Reverend Roland Batchel, is a kindly, humane bachelor and amateur antiquarian, not unlike Swain himself. The stories' style emulates that of James, although they have been described as lacking "the unsettling, anarchic malevolence" of James' own supernatural stories, and the book itself was dedicated to James. Some of the stories have made regular appearances in anthologies since their first publication, but the whole collection was republished in 1989 as Bone to His Bone: The Stoneground Ghost Tales of E.G.Swain by Equation, with an additional six stories about Stoneground and Mr. Batchel by the author David G. Rowlands, and again in 1996 by Ash-Tree Press.

...and here it is:
http://www.munseys.com/diskfour/stonedex.htm

Source of Bio and Review: WIKIPEDIA

[crusoe]

This delightful collection of classic ghost stories was the only foray into the world of supernatural fiction made by the renowned British architect Sir Thomas Graham Jackson. Jackson was born in 1835 and rose to become one of the most distinguished architects of his generation. He spent much of his career working within the academic environment of Oxford, England and his work on many college projects is enduring and highly regarded. The internationally famous 'Bridge of Sighs' over New College Lane is notable among them. Perhaps it was his long association with the world of academia that fostered a love of the 'Jamesian' style of the ghostly tale. In any event his own literary efforts-executed late in life at the age of 80- fall satisfyingly within that tradition. This concise book is now very rare and among collectors of supernatural fiction is a highly desirable find on the antiquarian book market.
Source: Amazon

Here you go…swollowed best half past midnight by candle-light and a sweet old port:

http://www.munseys.com/diskthree/sixghdex.htm

[crusoe]

There are many weird stories out there. I'm trying hard to find the more hidden ones for you. Not that I succeed all the Time, but a lot of treasures are buried just behind the bush in front of us. The Name is the Key as you know. Pass me the Spade and I'll start digging...Have a nice midnight.

[crusoe]

Born Charlotte Eliza Lawson Cowan in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland on 30 September 1832, Riddell was the youngest daughter of James Cowan, of Carrickfergus, High Sheriff for the county of Antrim and Ellen Kilshaw of Liverpool, England.
In the winter of 1855, four years after her father's death, she and her mother moved to London. Charlotte was visited by death again the following year when her mother died. In 1857 she married Joseph Hadley Riddell, a civil engineer, originally from Staffordshire, but resident in London. It is known that they moved to live in St John's Lodge between Harringay and West Green in the mid 1860s, moving out in 1873 as the area was being built up.
Her husband died in 1880. Charlotte lived a lonely life thereafter until she died from cancer in Ashford, Kent, England on 24 September 1906.
Source: Wikipedia

Here are some of the best Ghost Stories I’ve ever read…and well, that’s what I do.

Weird Stories
http://www.munseys.com/diskthree/weriddex.htm

[crusoe]

…was a French writer of fiction and drama who specialized in short stories of the macabre which were regularly printed in the columns of Paris newspapers and sometimes staged by le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, the repertory company in the Pigalle district devoted to melodramatic productions .Many of Level's stories were translated into English in the magazine Weird Tales. As editor John Robert Colombo noted in Stories of Fear and Fascination (2007), Battered Silicon Dispatch Box French critics see Level as the heir of the Symbolist writer Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; British critics, as the successor of Edgar Allan Poe; American critics, as the contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft. Of this fiction, Lovecraft himself observed in Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945), "This type, however, is less a part of the weird tradition than a class peculiar to itself--the so-called conte cruel, in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations, and gruesome physical horrors." Critic Philippe Gontier wrote, "We can only admire, now almost one hundred years later, the great artistry with which Maurice Level fabricated his plots, with what care he fashioned all the details of their unfolding and how with a master's hand he managed the building of suspense."

Source: Wikipedia

One of his Best:
THOSE WHO RETURN
http://http://www.amalgamatedspooks.com/return.htm

[crusoe]

...was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic style.Cram also wrote fiction. A number of his stories, notably "The Dead Valley", were published in a collection entitled Black Spirits and White (Stone & Kimball, 1895). The collection has been called "one of the undeniable classics of weird fiction". H. P. Lovecraft wrote, "In 'The Dead Valley' the eminent architect and mediævalist Ralph Adams Cram achieves a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description."

Source: Wikipedia

Here's the above mentioned Collection. A recommendation from Yours truly...

Black Spirits and White
http://www.munseys.com/diskseven/blaswdex.htm