View source for Review:The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales/Barbara Roden

{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles
 |Date=1992-01-01
 |Book=The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
 |BookAuthor=Chris Baldick
 |Reviewer=Barbara Roden
 |Topics=Anthology
}}{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles
 |Date=1992-01-01
 |Book=Victorian Ghost Stories; An Oxford Anthology
 |BookAuthor=Michael Cox (editor)
 |Reviewer=Barbara Roden
 |Topics=Anthology
}}
This review of the books ''"The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales" by Chris Baldick and "Victorian Ghost Stories; An Oxford Anthology", by Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert'' was written by [[Barbara Roden]] and published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992).


== Review ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p206-review-broden.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 206)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p207-review-broden.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 207)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p208-review-broden.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 208)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1992-vol3-p209-review-broden.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 3, 1992, p. 209)]]

: [[File:oup-1992-the-oxford-book-of-gothic-tales.jpg|100px]]
: '''The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales'''
: Edited by Chris Baldick 
: Oxford University Press, 1992; xxiii + 533pp: £16.95 ISBN 0-19-214194-5 


: [[File:oup-1991-victorian-ghost-stories.jpg|100px]]
: '''Victorian Ghost Stories; An Oxford Anthology'''
: Edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert 
: Oxford University Press 
: Hardcover: 1991; xx + 498pp: £16.95; ISBN 0-19-214202-X Paperback: 1992: 528pp: £6.99; ISBN 0-19-282998-8 


'''Reviewed by Barbara Roden'''

That stories by [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]] can legitimately find a place in both these recent Oxford publications (and in a third, ''Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection'', reviewed elsewhere) is a demonstration of his talent and versatility as an author. His inclusion in an anthology of ghost stories is not surprising, as such tales as '[[The Story of the Brown Hand|The Brown Hand]]' and '[[Lot No. 249]]' have turned up in the pages of countless such collections over the years. It is therefore pleasing to find that Cox and Gilbert have eschewed the more familiar tales and chosen one of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|ACD]]'s earliest efforts, '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' (1883). It is perhaps the closest [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] ever came to writing a classic ghost story, and the maturity and completeness of the tale are remarkable when one considers the author was only twenty-three when he wrote it. 

The ghost stories favoured by the Victorians were, as is stated in the introduction, '... typically domestic in tone and inclined to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. In order to achieve this effect, ... writers frequently made use of an appearance of fact to enforce an illusion of authenticity.' Thus the short preface to '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]', noting that the narrative is an extract from the journal of JOHN MCALISTER [sic] RAY, student of medicine ...', and the many details of life aboard a ship in the arctic, which [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] drew from his own experience, provide a solid contrast to the eerie events which begin to unfold. Prosaic mentions of positions and thermometer readings ground the story in reality, enabling the supernatural elements to appear even more strange and inexplicable. 

The best writers of ghost stories also knew the value of reticence. They did not necessarily feel the need to explain their hauntings: they knew that what the reader could conjure up in the imagination was far more frightening than anything they could set down on paper. '[[The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'|The Captain of the Pole-Star]]' is an excellent illustration of this approach, although one of the supreme examples can be found earlier in the volume, in Rhoda Broughton's 'The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth.'

As in their previous collection. The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, Cox and Gilbert have provided an excellent introduction, which gives an overview of the Victorian ghost story and the climate which led to its birth and growth. Some of the criteria they used in selecting the tales are worth noting, as they provide an excellent description of the classic ghost story: 

: Each story should reveal to the reader a spectacle of the returning dead, or their agents, and their actions: there must be a dramatic interaction between the living and the dead, more often than not with the intention of frightening or unsettling the reader: [and] the story must exhibit clear literary quality... 

The thirty-five stories in this collection all conform to the editor's guidelines, and it is pleasing to note the large proportion of female authors included. Many of the best writers of ghost stories have been women, as Richard Dalby notes in his preface to Victorian Ghost Stories by Eminent Women Writers (Carroll and Graf. 1990): 'Over the past 150 years Britain has led the world in the art of the classic ghost story, and it is no exaggeration to state that at least fifty per cent of quality examples in the genre were by women writers.' Roald Dahl, in his introduction to Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, wrote: 

: After I had read altogether some three hundred published [ghost] stories. I had succeeded in discovering seven good ones...
: What was going on here? Every single one of these [seven] stories was written by a woman! What an extraordinary thing. I began to wonder whether the really good ghost story belonged solely to the female. Was she perhaps more sensitive in that small delicate area than the male? 

Such Victorian mistresses of the ghost story as Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte Riddell, E. Nesbit, Amelia B. Edwards, and Mary E. Wilkins are represented. Other authors include Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, R. L. Stevenson, M. R. James, Jerome K. Jerome, and Algernon Blackwood, and the editors have thankfully avoided the inclusion of stories which are over-familiar. There are also telling contributions from such lesser known authors as Barry Pain, R. H. Benson, Dinah Mulock, and B. M. Croker. The most chilling story in the collection? Bernard Capes' superb 'An Eddy on the Floor', which is guaranteed to inspire you to leave the lights on when you go to sleep. 

The inclusion of a [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] story in a collection of Gothic tales is, at first glance, more difficult to understand. The story is '[[SPEC|The Speckled Band]]', and Baldick writes. [The story] will have been seen before by many readers in [a] different context, but may now appear to take on a changed complexion alongside [its] new neighbours in the many-windowed house of Gothic fiction. The reason for its inclusion becomes obvious when one reads the comprehensive introduction and strips away the character of Sherlock Holmes. What remains is a classic Gothic tale, in which two young and attractive women are kept in seclusion in an ancient and crumbling building. Their oppressor is their evil step-father, who may or may not have sexual as well as financial designs on them. One of the women dies in mysterious and frightening circumstances, and the villain succumbs in the end to at gruesome and shocking death. Had a similar story been written in 1791 instead of 1891 it would have come from the pen of Mrs Ann Radcliffe, and readers would instantly have recognised the Gothic trappings and pulled their chairs closer to the fire. 

'[[SPEC|The Speckled Band]]' is set firmly in the 1890's, as opposed to the dim reaches of a barbarous past favoured by so many earlier writers in the genre. This, however, does not disqualify it from being a Gothic story. As Baldick writes: 

: In principle and in practice it is perfectly possible to have a Gothic story set in the author's own time, provided that the tale focuses upon a relatively enclosed space in which some antiquated barbaric code still prevails. For instance, [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s story '[[The Adventure of the Speckled Band]]' is set at a time within the living memory of all its first readers, but within an ancestral mansion locked into an archaic form of domestic tyranny. Dislodged from the specific association with the Middle Ages which gave it its name, the Gothic has become in such ways a mobile form... 

As in ''Victorian Ghost Stories'' there is a comprehensive introduction, which discusses in some detail the origins of both the Gothic tale and the term Gothic as a description of said tale. The thirty-seven anthologised stories have been arranged chronologically, allowing the conscientious reader to pass from the full-blown Gothic of such anonymous works as 'The Friar's Tale' (1792) and 'The Astrologer's Prediction or The Maniac's Fate' (1826) through Edgar Allan Poe's superb 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (1839) to such present-day examples as William Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily' (1930) and Isabel Allende's 'If You Touched My Heart' (1991). One of the finest tales in the book, H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Outsider' (1926), is, like [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s contribution, initially a surprise. After reading the first lines, however, it becomes abundantly clear that this, too, is a Gothic tale: 

: Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft... 
: I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors. seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere. as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. 

This is a fine compilation, and an excellent companion to ''Victorian Ghost Stories''. Together these two anthologies represent ideal reading for long winter evenings, with [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s contributions more than holding their own amongst very distinguished company. 

B.R.







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