The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori and others

This collection of "Tales of the Macabre" is very uneven in style, tone, and quality.  The introduction tells us that this collection was put together to complement a previous Oxford volume, Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine.  Blackwood's, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, was extremely influential and widely read in the 19th century, containing essays on political and social issues, as well as literary offerings.  It published works by the likes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, William Godwin, James Hogg, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, thus contributing to the development of the Romantic movement.  The Tale of Terror was in its heyday, and the magazines supplied the reading public with a steady stream of the macabre, horrific, and sensational.

Not content with limiting themselves with tales of terror from Blackwood's magazine, Oxford produced The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre: "The aim of the present collection, however, is to exhibit the variety and vitality of the terror-tales and similarly macabre fiction published in the rival magazines  of London and Dublin, in the two decades following the appearance of Polidori's tale; that is, the 1820s and 1830s."  These are very narrow parameters, which limit the scope and quality of tales included in this collection.  

"Sir Guy Eveling's Dream" by Horace Smith is written in a pseudo-archaic style so bizarre and convoluted, with vocabulary to rival Jabberwocky, that I thought I might have hit my head and not realized it as I struggled to make sense of it all.

The absolute worst tale here has to be "Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman" by William Carleton.  It reminded me of the torture that is reading The Valley of Fear, that blight on the Sherlock Holmes canon loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton detectives.  The Ribbonmen were a secret society of violent Irish radicals.  While their midnight meeting in a chapel has imagery suggestive of a Black Mass, this tale quickly descends into gruesome (and disgusting) descriptions of violence.  This type of story is not the type of macabre story that I like.

I found "The Red Man" by Catherine Gore lurid and in extremely poor taste.  Miss Gore lived up to her name.

Putting these three aside, the rest of the tales were interesting and engaging to varying degrees, and a couple of them were real gems.  Madness, fears of being buried alive, the bodysnatching craze of 19th century, castles, secret passages, graveyards, and curses all make an appearance.  I loved the fairytale imagery (with a twist) in "The Bride of Lindorf," and the folklore feel of "The Master of Logan."   One of the best tales was "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" by the Irish Gothic writer Sheridan Le Fanu.  This one is part tale of terror, part locked room mystery, and was later developed into Le Fanu's novel Uncle Silas.  

Of course the real draw of this collection is "The Vampyre" by John Polidori.  I think a discussion of Dr. Polidori's tale merits its own post at some future date.  For now, suffice it to say that this is the tale that launched the vampire craze in literature which carries on to this day, and was the product of that infamous ghost story competition which also gave us Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  This Oxford edition provides a bit of introductory material and notes on the publishing history.  It includes the "Letter from Geneva" that accompanied the anonymous manuscript to the publishing house, as well as a later "Note on 'The Vampyre'" by Polidori and Byron's "Fragment" which influenced Polidori's tale.

This Oxford collection would earn a place on my shelves for Polidori alone, but I very much enjoyed some of these other tales of the macabre.

Chosen for my Tea and Ink Society 2024 Classics Reading Challenge for October: a spooky classic or short story collection.

The Castle of Otranto (1977)

When I finished reading The Castle of Otranto, I checked to see if there had ever been any film adaptations of the story, though I had never heard of any.  Imagine my delight when I discovered this short film from 1977, directed by Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer.  Only 17 minutes long, it's structured as a mockumentary frame story in live action, featuring an adaptation of the story itself presented in cut-out animation.    

The film is set at a castle in Czechoslovakia, where amateur archaeologist Dr. Vozáb is being interviewed by a reporter.  Dr. Vozáb relates that Walpole's Gothic novel is based upon true events, and that the story has its origin not in the Italian town of Otranto, but here at the Czech Castle Orthany, near Náchod.  We are shown artifacts the good doctor has uncovered, and take a walk to the caves where Isabella hid.  The doctor's findings grow ever more fantastic, and I won't say more lest I spoil it for you!

Cut-out animation was the perfect medium to tell the story.  In the very first scene, we are looking at an actual book edition of The Castle of Otranto, turning pages and then focusing on an illustration of a castle.  It fills the frame and we begin to explore the illustration, subtly transitioning into exploring the interior of the illustrated castle, which we could not have have done by looking at the page in the book.  The lines between the tangible reality of the book and the imaginative world of the story have been blurred, mirroring the inner experience of an engaged imagination while reading.  The physical book begins to fade into the background as we read; we "live" in the story.  Cut-out animation is book illustration come to almost life.  It retains a slightly static, paperlike and two-dimensional storybook quality.  We are in a book, but the words are beginning to take on life, as scenes cut back and forth between turning pages and animated figures.  The juxtaposition of the scenes of the archaeologist and the reporter exploring the castle and looking at artifacts with the animated story world blur the lines between reality and imagination even further, until the glorious ending, when the two worlds merge into one.

The artwork and the overall tone of the film have that touch of macabre humor I always enjoy.  I feel like Edward Gorey would have liked this film.

Watch it HERE

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is considered the first Gothic novel.  It was first published on Christmas Eve 1764, in the guise of ancient manuscript, "found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England" and claimed to have been printed in Naples in 1529 (though undoubtedly composed at some earlier date).  Walpole kept his own identity a secret, even adopting a pseudonym for the personage of the translator of this ancient Italian work: William Marshal, Gent.  Walpole went a step further with this fabricated air of authenticity, suggesting that while "the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth.  The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle."  

Undoubtedly.  But the castle in question was not a crumbling stronghold in southern Italy, but a villa in Twickenham on the outskirts of London called Strawberry Hill, which Walpole had purchased in 1747.  Strawberry Hill was an ordinary country cottage at this point, a nice enough place, but lacking in the requisite "gloomth" to suit Walpole's tastes.  He spent the next 25 years adding turrets, towers, cloisters, pointed arches, stained glass, and finials, transforming the house into a Gothic castle in miniature.  Walpole now had a fitting backdrop for his eccentric antiquarian collections and his medieval imagination.

The Castle of Otranto had its dark genesis in a dream of its author, steeped as he was in this atmosphere of medieval Romance and Gothic architecture:

"I waked one morning in the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour.  In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.  The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it..."

The imaginative background of Otranto is a Gothic story in itself.  Its publishing history gave us the trope of the "found manuscript," it was composed in a Gothic revival "castle," its ghostly armored giant came to the author in a dream.  

Medieval Romance was out of favor in the neoclassical 18th century.  Anything medieval was considered barbaric and uncouth by the aesthetic standards of the time.  We see the first stirrings of Romanticism in the "Gothic Revival" - a sort of pre-Romanticism, if you will, that will lead us on to the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, Byron, and the Shelleys.  But that day was not yet come when Walpole first published The Castle of Otranto - he was helping to create this new movement in literature and the arts.  Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry on the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful had appeared in 1757 (seven years before Otranto).  Burke's new twist on the concept of the sublime  divorced it from mere classical notions of beauty instilling pleasure.  Burke maintained that awe and a sense of horror could also evoke a pleasurable emotional response - as long as the horror concerned was fictitious.  And so we add another ingredient to the simmering cauldron of Gothic literature.  Eye of newt, toe of frog, Burke's sublime, neo-medieval architecture... The Castle of Otranto is taking shape in the rising vapors.

Along with lizard's leg and howlet's wing, we must not forget to toss the plays of William Shakespeare into the cauldron.  Consider the witchcraft present in Macbeth, the chanting and prophecies of the three Weird Sisters, the omens, the dramatic weather reflecting dark deeds.  Think of the ghost in Hamlet.  Think of ancient kings and castle settings, revenge, murder, and high dramatic style.  Shakespearean elements abound in The Castle of Otranto - Walpole explicitly acknowledges his debt to the Bard in the preface to the second edition.  Even the five chapter structure of the novel echoes the five acts of a Shakespearean drama.

This post has not even touched on the plot of the novel in question - rather, its focus has been on setting the scene and the building up of a Gothic atmosphere, which I believe are crucial to the enjoyment of the book.  It can't be read like a modern novel with well-developed characters.  It isn't that sort of book.  It reads like a fast-paced drama peopled with stock characters who speak in elevated style, as one would find in the theater.  In Walpole's story, he sought to blend the imaginative elements of the medieval romance with the more naturalistic touches of the modern novel: and thus, the Gothic genre was born.  This may not be the best Gothic novel, but it was the first.  If we suspend our disbelief, spectres, prophecies, trapdoors, maidens in distress, dark secrets, and subterraneous passages await.   

Edited to add: My review of the 1977 short film version of The Castle of Otranto can be found HERE.