Weird Stories by Charlotte Riddell

Six pieces of spooky sensational fiction make up Weird Stories by Charlotte Riddell newly re-published By Victorian Secrets. They were first published in 1882 and I am sure found a happy audience amongst the fans of writers like Wilkie Collins. I also love Wilkie Collins and these stories have found a happy new audience in me.

The six stories are sufficiently dissimilar to make reading them all in one go feasible (this isn't always the case with Victorian ghost tales which can be a bit "samey") but I savoured them with my morning coffee one at time over the course of a week and very good they are too. They are longer than you might expect, each tale being divided into chapters so there is scope for the gentle building of atmosphere and tension, as well as more charactisation that might normally be the case.

Of the six I think my favourite was "Nut Bush Farm" with its atmospheric countryside and the alarming figure of Miss Gostock the eccentric landlady of Nut Bush Farm whom we meet when the narrator goes to sign the lease:

Like one in a dream I sat and watched Miss Gostock while she wrote. Nothing about the transaction seemed real to me. The Farm itself resembled nothing I had ever seen before with my waking eyes, and Miss Gostock appeared to me but as some monstrous figure in a story of giants and hobgoblins. The man's coat, the woman's skirt, the hobnailed shoes, the grisly hair, the old straw hat, the bare unfurnished room, the bright sunshine outside, all stuck me as mere accessories in a play - as nothing which had any hold on the outside world.

The narrator has determined to take a farm hoping country life will improve the health of his ailing son and nervous wife. The farm,  which looks too good to be true, of course turns out to have its problems. The narrator and his sister set out to find out what has happened to the previous owner who drew five thousand pounds from the bank and has not been seen nor heard of since.

The six stories all end with a little twist in the tale and if I have any criticism of them at all is that after taking a nice amount of time in the build-up the denouement arrives all too quickly and with the barest of explanations. Like with Wilkie Collins, the pleasure is in the build-up and in watching a skilled writer turn his perceived readership on a sixpence when he wants to lead them astray.

Victorian Secrets are publishing these new editions with proper academic introductions. These are not the chatty lighter pieces of other re-publishers, but properly grounded contextual discussions with a brief 'further reading'. All of which makes what Emma Liggins has done sound rather dry, but it is far from that. Instead what we have manages to be both accessible to the non-specialist whilst useful for the undergraduate. A particularly interesting point that Liggins makes is that Riddell makes very interesting use of women in her tales. Liggins notes:

Riddell's haunted house narratives are particularly striking for their varied portrayal of female ghosts, or of strange monstrous women. Bracketing Riddell with fellow writers Margaret Oliphant and Florence Marryat, Vanessa D. Dickerson notes that all three women 'probed the nature of women's special relation to the spiritual and the material' at a time when new legislation was only just addressing women's rights to their own earnings and their property; the second Married Women's Property Act, extending rights granted in the original act of 1870, was passed in the same year as Weird Stories, 1882.

All in all Weird Stories is at the least a very pleasant accompaniment to anyone's coffee break and read in conjunction with the introduction a stimulating accompaniment too; and after this flying start I look forward to the companion volume published by Victorian Secrets, Twilight Stories by Rhoda Broughton.

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The Vanessa D. Dickerson recommended in the introduction, by the way, is Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide: Women Writers and the Supernatural  which looks fascinating, if a little expensive, on Amazon. Cheaper copies can sometimes be found on Biblio.com Used Books which is where I have just ordered my own copy.

Comments

[Kristen M.]

This sounds like a "must have" for me! I really enjoy Victorian ghost stories and could use a new author in the mix. Thanks for the review!

[Martin Edwards]

Sounds interesting. I don't know Vanessa Dickerson's book, but I'm currently reading Julia Briggs' book about ghost stories, Night Visitors, which is excellent.

[Juxtabook]

Thanks for your comment Kristen - I hope you enjoy it!

Martin - you made an excellent book recommendation the last time you commented on here too. Thank you again.