Product Description

Robert Murray Gilchrist (1868-1917) is perhaps best known for his interest in topography, and for his stories set in Derbyshire's Peak District. But he was also a master of mystery and horror, as this richly varied collection shows. If you are looking for a conventional horror story, in which the supernatural element is paramount, try The Crimson Weaver, Dame Inowslad, Witch In-Grain, or A Night on the Moor. If you are more taken with the psychology of the participants, often allied to a fascination with the killing of friends or lovers, then Francis Shackerley, The Noble Courtesan, Althea Swathmore, and My Friend will be right up your street. For humour we are offered the Peakland comedy of The Panicle or A Witch in the Peak. And when it comes to love, there are the tragic and poignant tales we might expect (The Return, The Lost Mistress. The Madness of Betty Hooton), but also the engaging and unusual Bubble Magic - a story of romantic betrayal which hints at a happy ending.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280367 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Part of Wordsworth's Mystery & Supernatural series, featuring classic spine chilling tales, some previously unavailable for many years.

Customer Reviews

A little bonkers, but fun
This isn't an "ordinary" ghost story collection. The nearest thing I can compare it to is the writings of Clark Ashton Smith, not because the writing style is similar, but because both authors have their own unique worlds which don't really resemble anything realistic, and you either go along with the flow of their feverish imaginations, or you bale in disgust at the verbose posturing. Gilchrist's pseudo-historical tales are painted in over-bright tones, laden with doom and betrayal and suicide and madness. I read the first story and thought it ludicrous, but by the end of the book I was hooked and wanted more.

Wearisome
Being a great fan of Victorian gothic fiction and ghost stories, I thought this would be an interesting read. I was wrong. Mr Gilchrist has a very dreary perception of life, and a real downer on women, voiced in lengthy purple prose of such tedium that the stories drag. The subjects are bizarre, usually involving evil women who lure innocent men into their wicked webs, but be prepared to be bored to death rather than scared to death. This is a shame, because the words he uses are beautiful, but the way he puts them together just doesn't work.

Overblown
The problem with reading literature long after it was written and away from the original publication medium is that you lack the context the author intended and so may miss something. It may be, therefore, that Gilchrist, writing at the turn of the C20, was a writer of skilled parody and pastiche and was skillfully sending up the overblown gothic romances and horrors of the Victorian era. Alternatively, it may be that he just wasn't a very good writer. I just don't know.
Certainly he never uses one word where an effusive eruction of prolix verbiage as beauteous - but as fey and valueless - as a gilded bundle of lillies on the bosom of a dead maid (if you catch my drift) will do, and as such he turns stories which would make fair two-to three page thrillers into overlong ten-to-twelve page bores. Even the short stories of a few pages long drag. Perhaps he was being paid by the word and his editor told him that "All work and no play makes jack a dull boy" wouldn't sell.
I'm not sure who I'd recommend this book to. Perhaps if you have a pretentious, poetry-writing goth in your life it would make a good present. Otherwise, I'd advise you to skip it.