: Nick Rennison
: Victorian Tales of the Weird A curated anthology of Victorian and Edwardian weird tales, supernatural horrors and uncanny fiction
: No Exit Press
: 9781835010679
: 1
: CHF 12.60
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 288
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
From a dancing automaton running amok at a ball, to a prehistoric beast lurking in the depths of a Yorkshire cave, this anthology explores the nature of the 'old weird', and unordinary stories which go outside the boundaries of everyday life. The anthology includes not only stories by well-known writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, but also by long-forgotten authors such as D. F. Hannigan and Reginald Bacchus. Focusing on the idea and history of what can be classified as 'old weird', compared to the 'new weird', Rennison applies experience and knowledge of Victorian literary history to bring these supernatural tales to the surface.

NICK RENNISON is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in the Victorian era and in crime fiction. He is the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Rivals of Dracula, Supernatural Sherlocks, More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock's Sisters and American Sherlocks, plus A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History& Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His crime novels, Carver's Quest and Carver's Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and BBC History Magazine.

THE DRAGON OF ST PAUL’S


By Reginald Bacchus (1873–1945) and Ranger Gull (1875–1923)


Bacchus, who was married to the actress Isa Bowman, a former child friend of Lewis Carroll, had a louche career in 1890s bohemian London, which included friendship with the notorious publisher of erotica, Leonard Smithers. He wrote several pornographic works for Smithers’s Erotika Biblion Society but he also produced novels and short stories for more respectable publishers and publications. Ranger Gull was a novelist and literary journalist who was to gain his greatest fame under the pen name Guy Thorne. His 1903 novel,When It Was Dark, told the story of the moral collapse which followed apparent disproof of Christ’s resurrection. Only when this is revealed as part of a Jewish plot (the book is unashamedly anti-Semitic) is order restored. Between 1898 and his death, Gull published more than 100 novels, mostly potboilers, many of which would now be categorised as science fiction or horror. Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull collaborated on a number of short stories around the turn of the century, mostly published in theLudgate Monthly. ‘The Dragon of St Paul’s’, which reflects the era’s fascination with the prehistoric past and with the possibility there might, somewhere in the world, be survivals from it, is the most memorable of them.

Ludgate Monthly, April 1899

First Episode

‘It is certainly a wonderful yarn,’ said Trant, ‘and excellent copy. My only regret is that I didn’t think of it myself in the first instance.’

‘But, Tom, why shouldn’t it be true? It’s incredible enough for anyone to believe. I’m sure I believe it, don’t you, Guy?’

Guy Descaves laughed. ‘Perhaps, dear. I don’t know and I don’t much care, but I did a good little leaderette on it this morning. Have you done anything, Tom?’

‘I did a whole buck middle an hour ago at very short notice. That’s why I’m a little late. I had finished all my work for the night, and I was just washing my hands when Fleming came in with the make-up. We didn’t expect him at all tonight, and the paper certainly was rather dull. He’d been dining somewhere, and I think he was a little bit cocked. Anyhow he was nasty, and kept the presses back while I did a “special” on some information he brought with him.’

While he was talking, Beatrice Descaves, his fiancée, began to lay the table for supper, and in a minute she called them to sit down. The room was very large, with cool white-papered walls, and the pictures, chiefly original black and white sketches, were all framed inpasse-partout frames, which gave the place an air of serene but welcome simplicity. At one end of it was a great window which came almost to the floor, and in front of the window there was a low, cushioned seat. The night was very hot, and the window was wide open. It