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Book Review: Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

Pegasus Books, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1643130200

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

‘Tis the season for ghost stories, and with so many out there, Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger had some difficult choices about what to include in this anthology. They have chosen eighteen tales of the supernatural with varying tone, from comic to terrifying, by authors well-known for their ability with supernatural fiction, authors from both Europe and America, authors well-known for their other works who also wrote supernatural fiction, and some authors barely known to the reading public at all. There is a brief introduction, and each story is preceded with a short paragraph about the author and his works. When necessary, the editors included annotations, but the annotations do not impede the flow of the story; rather, they enrich it.

The anthology begins with a ballad, “Sweet William’s Ghost”, which is followed by a gothic tale by Johann August Apel, whose work may have inspired the beginnings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber”, which Morton and Klinger identify as the first modern ghost story, is next. They then cross the ocean to America for the next two stories, “The Gray Champion” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Ligieia” by Edgar Allan Poe. Certainly no one can argue with either Poe’s brilliance or madness in his writing, and both are depicted in full force here.

Three lesser-known women writers of supernatural fiction all write powerfully of ghosts driven by their emotions towards the ones they left behind. “Since I Died” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps is a compelling vision of what follows death, narrated by a just-deceased woman observing her lover’s grief, and is one of the outstanding stories in the book. “The Shell of Sense” by the little-known Olivia Howard Dunbar, details the vengeance, and eventually forgiveness, of a recently-deceased wife on her husband and sister when she discovers they have fallen in love. In Georgia Wood Pangborn’s “The Substitute”, a lonely woman is visited by a friend who is desperately in need of her help.

Charles Dickens, M.R. James, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Charlotte (Mrs. J.H.) Riddell all tell stories of mysterious and terrifying ghosts. Ambrose Bierce creats a nightmarish, fantastical world in “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”, and Frank Stockton’s “The Philosophy of Relative Existences” is almost science-fictional in nature, a thoughtful puzzle of a story. Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen” , based on actual news reports, described a battle during World War I where one of the British servicemen summoned St. George and his bowmen to defeat the Germans. The brief descriptions of the war, and the detail in which Machen is able to vividly portray the men and their despair in very few words, are very powerful. One of my favorites, a surprise to me, was Mark Twain’s “A Ghost Story”, which had me laughing out loud.

The variety in this collection of ghost stories is impressive, and I really appreciated the inclusion of both lesser-known women writers of supernatural fiction, and supernatural stories by writers better known for other work. Over the past several years I have done a lot of reading on my own on early women writers of supernatural fiction and until very recently it’s been difficult to find any work by some of them at all– and for those who are better known for their other writing, their supernatural tales have often been disregarded or kept under wraps. It would be easy to lean back on just a few authors already known for their ghost stories, but the effort that went into making sure this carefully curated anthology was varied in its authors and contents is something I really appreciate. Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense is a perfect read for this Halloween season.

Posted on October 26, 2019 by Kirsten, Reply

Book Review: Ladies of Gothic Horror: A Collection of Classic Stories edited by Mitzi Szereto

Ladies of Gothic Horror: A Collection of Classic Stories edited by Mitzi Szereto

Midnight Rain Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1794556317

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Next time someone says that women can’t write horror fiction, point them to this book. In Ladies of Gothic Horror, Mitzi Szereto has collected 17 stories by women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries that will creep you out, chill your bones, and check the locks on your doors. While some names may be more familiar to readers of supernatural fiction, such as Mary Shelley, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, many of the stories are by women writers better known for other works: Edith Nesbit is chiefly known for her children’s books, Elizabeth Gaskell for her social realist novels, Edith Wharton for her novels about the American upper class, Virginia Woolf for her modernist and feminist writings, Helena Blavatsky for her theosophical and occult work. Szereto follows each of the stories with a detailed biographical note about the author, when that information is available (very little is available on Eleanor F. Lewis, who evidently wrote only two stories– it’s too bad she didn’t write more).

Many of these women were supporting their families by writing for magazines, and their writing can be dramatic, depending on stereotypical characters, but they also skillfully build suspense and atmosphere, administer retribution, and illuminate tragedy. Standout stories include Gertrude Atherton’s “Death and the Woman”, which manages to create dread and suspense without ever having the main character leave her husband’s bedside; Edith Nesbit’s “Man-Size in Marble”, in which a newlywed husband discovers why you should pay attention to your housekeeper; Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s “The Cold Embrace”, in which a young man learns that having your fiancee return from the grave is not actually romantic; Edith Wharton’s “Afterward”, in which an American couple discover that an English haunting is no joking matter; and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Elia W. Peattie’s “The Room of the Evil Thought” and Eleanor F. Lewis’ “The Vengeance of a Tree” are brief, terrifying stories of strange hauntings. Helena Blavatsky’s “The Ensouled Violin” is positively gruesome. The collection ends with Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House”, a much lighter piece than the rest, that provides a satisfying conclusion.

Ladies of Gothic Horror does a valuable service by spotlighting supernatural and gothic works by women writers better known for other work and by introducing some of the 19th and early 20th centry women writers of supernatural fiction that can still be found in print (some, like Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s The Wind in the Rose-bush, are even available free on Kindle). While there are a few writers, like Eleanor F. Lewis, who may have been previously unknown, this book makes a good starting place for further investigating works by women writers of supernatural and gothic horror from the time period. There are few other anthologies similar to it that are still in print, although I expect we will see more now that people are discovering women writers of horror through the just-released Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson, which we recently reviewed. Ladies of Gothic Horror is a great opportunity for widening your horizons and experiencing the chills, suspense, and terrors, that can be found in these women’s works. Highly recommended.

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Kirsten, Reply

Women In Horror Month: Supernatural Tales, Hidden No More

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Looking back at American supernatural tales of the 19th and 20th century, we can see that often the themes that they focused on revolved around women and children and the traditional roles they were expected to fill. On the surface, it may seem like that reinforces a conservative, patriarchal view of the world, but women who wrote these stories often used them to explore questions about sexuality, marriage, the domestic sphere, and the horror of confinement to the narrow expectations faced by women and girls.

Shirley Jackson’s “Afternoon in Linen”, is a textbook example of this (literally– it appears in my daughter’s language arts textbook). While it has no supernatural elements, we see a lot of tension between adult expectations of our protagonist Harriet, her own desires, and the boy there who also happens to be her classmate. In the story, Harriet’s grandmother and mother expect her to perform on the piano and recite her original poetry to visitors. Harriet does not want to either play the piano or share her personal thoughts with the visitors and insists she doesn’t know how. She can tell that the boy who arrived with the visitors, who is also a classmate, will mock her poetry to her peers. Pushed to the limit by her grandmother, Harriet claims she lied about writing the poem herself. She would rather disappoint the expectations of the adults wanting to show off her feminine talents than perform for them; and she would rather be seen as a liar than teased by her peers. Harriet’s self-determination and how the conflicting expectations of the people around her affect her behavior leave the reader unsettled, even though the story doesn’t hold the horror of The Haunting of Hill House.

It’s interesting that actually, many of the women who wrote supernatural stories are seen as “regional” or “realistic” authors, with their ghost and supernatural stories disregarded in favor of their better-known works. Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, all of whom either appeared in my American lit textbook or were recommended reading, were never identified as writers of supernatural fiction there.

While supernatural tales often were written with women as the victims, sometimes they were also written with powerful women with agency in them. Women authors used the supernatural to explore anxieties about marriage, home, power, and the fragility of love and relationships. Under cover of the fantastic and unreal. they were able to strike deep into the emotional and psychological truths of women’s lives, while delivering a terrifying tale that those simply looking for entertainment could appreciate.

So many women wrote for newspapers and periodicals that have now crumbled to pieces that we may never know how many talented writers’ works were lost forever. Of those that remain, some are only available in out-of-print limited editions. Others, however, are available either free or cheap as ebooks (The Wind in the Rose-bush by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton, for instance) You kind of have to know who you’re looking for to find the hidden supernatural tales that haven’t made it into textbooks or onto lists of recommended or required reading. I’ve written about some of them in the past, but there’s much to do to bring women writers of supernatural fiction to light.

Luckily, today, women don’t have to fight quite as hard to be recognized for their outstanding work in the horror genre. Today on Facebook, author Christopher Golden asked writers to name the people who had been supportive to them on their creative journey, and there were many women writers who responded, and even more who were named as mentors and friends. Of course there is still a long way to go in terms of representation, but that’s why we have Women in Horror Month– to bring attention to all the great creative women in the horror genre who make it come alive. I challenge you to pick out a book by a woman writer of horror this month that you haven’t read before, and read it. There’s so much good stuff out there that there’s really no reasonable excuse not to.

Note: This post owes much to Alfred Bendixen’s Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers. It is out of print but is available new and used at Amazon. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in sampling the supernatural stories of many of the women mentioned above.