Customer Reviews

The Midnight Bell: A German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life (Gothic Classics)

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The Midnight Bell (1798) is one of the seven Gothic novels relished as "horrid" by the young ladies in Northanger Abbey. Not only did Jane Austen read it, so did her father, according to a letter on record. This and the other Gothic novels on the "horrid" list must have given Jane Austen a useful lesson in how not to write!

A contemporary reviewer lamented the "intricacy of plot" of The Midnight Bell, and the "hurry and confusion of incident" that left Francis Lathom little energy for character development.

It's certainly true that every minor character seems to have a shocking history that must be told, interrupting the main story line. Still, the main story line is fairly simple. Young Alphonsus is told by his mother, with blood on her hand, to flee the family castle and never return. He's not sure who's been murdered, his father or his uncle, or who murdered whom. But being an obedient son, he flees without question. Ultimately he will take courage and investigate the mystery. But not before multiple adventures befall him and everyone around him.

The young hero's meandering ill-funded life takes him from soldiering to mining to a cushy maintenance job in a convent, where he falls in love with a novice. The plot moves on to encompass love in a cottage, abduction, murder, torture, banditry, enslavement and imprisonment (not in that order). Fortunes, relatives and friends are lost and found.

I had no trouble reading The Midnight Bell from cover to cover. Improbable adventures have a certain appeal. But for me the value of the book is as a window into late eighteenth century reading habits. While contemporary critics generally abhorred Gothic extravagances, the public devoured them.