Late Victorian Gothic Tales

The Victorian fin de siecle has many associations: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.

Dionea, Vernon LeeLord Arthur Savile's Crime, Oscar WildeSir Edmund Orme, Henry JamesMagic Lantern, Jean LorrainThe Spectral Hand, Jean LorrainThe Mark of the Beast, Rudyard KiplingThe Dak Bungalow at Dakor, B.M. CrokerLot 249, Arthur Conan DoyleThe Case of Lady Sannox, Arthur Conan DoyleThe Pallinghurst Barow, Grant AllenThe Great God Pan, Arthur MachenVaila, M. P. Shiel