Customer Reviews

Late Victorian Gothic Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

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I collect Victorian Gothic stories and this is one of my favorites from my collection!! This book has a great sampling of the best gothic short stories written! It has Oscar Wilde's psychological thriller Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, Machen's classic The Great God Pan, and many other fantastic stories. Sheil's story, Vaila was particularly unnerving! He makes the reader feel like they are slowly descending into madness as he/she reads it!

The anthology contains a fine sampling of late victorian gothic fiction. One of the best things about books like this one is that they often re-introduce excellent but forgotten writers from the past. This anthology does not disappoint in this regard. I was very pleased to see that it includes Dionea, by Vernon Lee, and The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen. The gothic fiction of this period was particularly concerned with paganism and these stories reflect that. It is that very paganism that makes them relevant to readers today in our times of new age beliefs and Wicca.

In contrast with earlier gothic fiction, I would have to say that the late gothic period was more concerned with intellectual horror. It was finer in this way. For example, in a story from the first wave of gothic fiction, the reader would have found the ghost or supernatural element scary enough in itself. A late victorian gothic tale would add an intellectual dimension to the ghost story in that the writer would attempt to explore what a ghost is and represents. Whereas an earlier gothic tale would have found the actions of a madman abhorrent enough, the story Vaila, by MP Shiel, explores the origins and nature of madness through several generations of an old and accursed family.

Expect very finely wrought pieces of horror literature. The anthology is limited to victorian writers from Britain, and I thought this was its failing as it could have included writers like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, who were themselves authors of very great ghost stories. The late victorian gothic was also strongly influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and yet he is also missing from this anthology. Nonetheless, this book will be full of treats for real fans of the gothic.

I agree with previous reviewers that this is a great selection. The introduction is perceptive and helpful. The text is almost error-free. One editing change would have made this a superb Kindle purchase: put the notes at the end of each tale. I'm half-way through the collection, and by the time I get to the end, I will not care what the notes mean. Maybe I'm missing a technological short-cut, would love to know.