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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Diverse cast of characters:
No
you could tell they got paid by the word on many of these lmao
-only logging the short stories, the RLS and sweeney todd i plan to read and rate separately and i just read the 1818 frankenstein
-only logging the short stories, the RLS and sweeney todd i plan to read and rate separately and i just read the 1818 frankenstein
There were some stories that I had heard of but never read and others that I had never heard of. I enjoyed the opportunity to read some well known classics. Wagner the Wehr-wolf was a DNF.
SUCH. A. HARD. BOOK. TO. RATE.
I was really excited to recieve a copy of this book as a gift recently, because I was understandably under the impression that it was a collection of 19th century penny dreadfuls. In reality, it is a collection of 19th century gothic fiction; short fiction, as well as full blown novels/novellas. The desparity of the lengths of the pieces themselves was quite jarring actually; the shortest story in the book being only a few pages long, and the longest approximately 200 pages long.
Most of the pieces here are great, definitely worth reading.
I guess my biggest beef with this anthology in general is the misnomer of the title itself. Will a fairly comprehensive collection of actual penny dreadfuls EVER be released to a modern audience? I hope so!
If you dig the gothic genre of the period, you'll enjoy this gorgeous edition in your collection.
I was really excited to recieve a copy of this book as a gift recently, because I was understandably under the impression that it was a collection of 19th century penny dreadfuls. In reality, it is a collection of 19th century gothic fiction; short fiction, as well as full blown novels/novellas. The desparity of the lengths of the pieces themselves was quite jarring actually; the shortest story in the book being only a few pages long, and the longest approximately 200 pages long.
Most of the pieces here are great, definitely worth reading.
I guess my biggest beef with this anthology in general is the misnomer of the title itself. Will a fairly comprehensive collection of actual penny dreadfuls EVER be released to a modern audience? I hope so!
If you dig the gothic genre of the period, you'll enjoy this gorgeous edition in your collection.
Frankenstein
The name Frankenstein wasn’t mentioned until over 20 pages in. Not important but I found it weird.
There were more letters than I remembered. I remembered that Dracula was epistolary but had forgotten this book was.
I love how Shelly didn’t give an specifics on just how the monster was brought to life. I remember the electricity from the movie but the book was vague and she calls it out, too, by having Victor say he doesn’t want to relay the precise info that could be used again.
I like how Vic and his monster have mirrored arcs; the monster goes from monster to human and vic goes from human to monster.
I did find the monster’s being able to teach himself to speak and read by just observing a bit hard to swallow. But the book is over 200 years old.
I did appreciate the wonder he has as he becomes aware of his senses.
Lastly, I like how the monster rides his ice boat onto the sunset. He says he’s gonna do himself in but we don’t see it.
Adventure of German Student
Only four pages but Irving still achieves the sense of tension he’s known for. The subtle clue of the woman’s choker necklace. It came across as jewelry but when it’s revealed she had been guillotined the day before and that’s what was keeping her head on was a great twist. I loved that but my second thought was “Man, Irving is all about decapitation!” I had to go check on Sleepy Hollow. It was published in 1820 and this was in 1824. I wonder if readers at the time expected her to be headless.
The Wehr-Wolf
It’s common to have the title creature not appear until the end but there were too many “thous” and “thys” and “yons” for my liking. I do like that kind of writing but this one just didn’t work for me.
The Pit and The Pendulum
Poe’s writing always sends a shiver down my entire body. He’s so good at writing madness and terror that it gives me the willies. The ending as with all of his endings, was sudden and a bit confusing. I had to read it twice before I realized that the narrator was rescued by a fellow Frenchman and had been imprisoned by the Spanish during the inquisition.
Also, when he first stumbled upon the pit, my first thought was, how did he not fall in it when he was walking around blind?
Sawney Beane
A mercifully quick story of a family of incestuous cannibals. The reason the original pair retreated to the cave and decided to murder and eat passers-by so they don’t have to have anything to do with the world wasn’t very clear. Any mention of cannibalism turns my stomach.
Aurelia
Another story where the creature, in this case a ghoul, doesn’t appear until the end. I connected with the writing better than the Wehr-Wolf and loved the ambiguous ending where Aurelia attacks her husband and he’s driven mad…by fear, by having to kill his ghoul-wife, by becoming a ghoul? Dunno.
Wake Not the Dead
The first sorcerer of the collection. Also the first vampire. But not of the Dracula Ilk. This story predates Stoker’s by over almost 70 years. So the sucking the blood isn’t from the neck but the chest. The hypnotism isn’t a look but a breath. And the vampire was made when the sorcerer grants a widower his wife that his wife were still alive. The dude brought her back from the dead for him. While the aversion to sunlight his there, whether it’s fatal or not is undetermined. The stake through the heart is there but must also include the promise to never think of her with happiness again. Which he ultimately fails to do.
Dream-Woman
I really enjoyed Collins’ The Woman in White and what is largely considered to be the first modern detective novel, The Moonstone. I was excited to read this story. And it was pretty good. His style is very like his contemporary, Dickens. I appreciated his not trying to explain how Isaac saw the woman who would be his wife try to murder him 7 years before they met. It was a style reminiscent of the Woman in White, slightly spooky but not outlandish.
A Night in the Grave
Written in an Irish accent, I couldn't make sense of so much of it. I skipped it. No wonder it was only one of two anonymous work in the collection!
The Case of Last Saxon
A non-Holmes Doyle story that has the same fanciful set of circumstances of a Holmes. But I knew the doctor was going to cut off the lip of his mistress, fooles by the cuckolded husband. Only 8 pages maybe if he had taken more time it would have been better.
Diary of Madman
A judge's diary reveals his everyday encounters with sending men to die has made him become obsessed with killing. So he does. The last person he kills, he also has an innocent man executed in him place.
George Dobson's Expedition to Hell
George, a coach driver, takes a man and his son to a place. George is detained from returning home until he agrees to be back at that place noon the next day. George wakes up. 'Twas but a dream. But then he dies at noon the next day. 'Twas real! He drove to hell!
The Scot accent that appears in the dialog that happens only on the last few pages was jarring. Though not as bad as A Night on a Grave story above.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Like Frankenstein, the exact method of how the transformation happens, is glossed over. Also like Frankie, a lot of the story is told in letters. I had forgotten how second-hand much of the action in stories of the era is.
I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it. But it’d been so long that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s influence fell upon me. Hyde was smaller in the story, being more corrupt. But in movies he’s a big dumb brute.
I had forgotten that the more evil Jekyll did as Hyde the more he became Hyde until he couldn’t even transform back to Jekyll and, I think, he did himself in. How, exactly, wasn’t explained.
The Apparition of Lord Tyrone to Lady Beresford
I had to look up what a Deist was; it’s the belief in a god but one that doesn’t interfere with humanity.
The other anonymous work is about Tyrone coming back after he died to prove that there is a god to Beresford. It was a little uneven and the prophesy Tryone gave to the Lady was dirty pool. She was told she was going to die when she’s 48 but she thinks she’s already 48. When someone tells her she’s only 47, on her birthday, which means she’s turning 48, she dies. So much fainting and unexplained death in this era of literature.
Lost Pyramid
The author of Little Women tries her hand at horror. And it’s a mummy’s curse! An explorer brings back some seeds from a mummy that he unwrapped to feed the fire that would get him found. He also threw in the coffins. It’s amazing the blasphemous ease with which such horrors are perpetrated…
Anyway the adventurer’s fair lady grows the seed, which is cursed and she dies. The End. No better or worse than much of the collection.
In Kropsfberg Keep
Two young men ain’t a-scared a’nuthin! So they spend the night in a haunted castle. One falls asleep and stays so. The other is awakened to find the ghost that haunts those parts beckoning him to a gap in the wall.
Other ghosts dance. The young man is threatened. He shoots the first ghost in the throat. He awakens. His friend has been shot in the throat. I actually liked the drama in this one. It was on the page for once.
Buried Alive
This four-page story reminds me of the myth that the term “graveyard shift” comes from peeps staying in the cemetery at to listen for a bell, which would be wrong when the finger of a person buried alive flailed in his grave. Which gave us “Dead ringer”. Only this time the guy buried alive, and aware the whole time, is shocked out of his trance after his grave is robbed to teach students anatomy and the first scalpel presses down on him.
The Dualitists
Only the second Bram Stoker story I’ve read. Two kids enjoying bashing stuff together. That start with inanimate objects then upgrade to pets, and finally toddlers. The scene where they kill the two toddlers made me sick. Then the toddlers’ father shots his own kids heads off and it made it worse. But when the true killers pin the blame on the father and get away with it, well that makes this the most terrifying story in this collection up to this point.
The Executioner
The first paragraph set it up like the dude had been an executioner for many moons. Turns out it was just once. The twist that he had lopped off his own dad’s head was good. Even though I guessed it. The story was well enough written that I didn’t feel soured by figuring it out.
A String of Pearls
I’d heard of the play and Johnny Depp-helmed flick but the only incarnation I’d seen was the end of Jersey Girl. The intro also ruined the surprise for me by telling me the pies were made from humans. Those two things aside, this was the best story of the collection.
There were plots and subplots and there were fully realized, if not overly complex characters. The writing style, with its purposefully long-winded way of saying simple things, reminded me of Dickens. Also like Dickens it went on too long. The entire chapter in the Mad House when a girl tells her tale to Tobias felt gratuitous. Especially since the exciting finish had already been set up. But that was the style at the time, right? Serialized and paid-by-the-word.
Some subplots were dropped. Sometimes literally. Like the girl from the Mad House, she fell when she and Tobias was escaping. And he left her behind. What happened to her? Other subplots were laid out carefully and made for a great twist. Like Mark being the cook not Thornhill. The author took great pains to say the Mark intended to change his name. But when he gave his name to the pie shop’s owner, I didn’t even think to doubt him. I was all in for him being Thornhill.
The name Frankenstein wasn’t mentioned until over 20 pages in. Not important but I found it weird.
There were more letters than I remembered. I remembered that Dracula was epistolary but had forgotten this book was.
I love how Shelly didn’t give an specifics on just how the monster was brought to life. I remember the electricity from the movie but the book was vague and she calls it out, too, by having Victor say he doesn’t want to relay the precise info that could be used again.
I like how Vic and his monster have mirrored arcs; the monster goes from monster to human and vic goes from human to monster.
I did find the monster’s being able to teach himself to speak and read by just observing a bit hard to swallow. But the book is over 200 years old.
I did appreciate the wonder he has as he becomes aware of his senses.
Lastly, I like how the monster rides his ice boat onto the sunset. He says he’s gonna do himself in but we don’t see it.
Adventure of German Student
Only four pages but Irving still achieves the sense of tension he’s known for. The subtle clue of the woman’s choker necklace. It came across as jewelry but when it’s revealed she had been guillotined the day before and that’s what was keeping her head on was a great twist. I loved that but my second thought was “Man, Irving is all about decapitation!” I had to go check on Sleepy Hollow. It was published in 1820 and this was in 1824. I wonder if readers at the time expected her to be headless.
The Wehr-Wolf
It’s common to have the title creature not appear until the end but there were too many “thous” and “thys” and “yons” for my liking. I do like that kind of writing but this one just didn’t work for me.
The Pit and The Pendulum
Poe’s writing always sends a shiver down my entire body. He’s so good at writing madness and terror that it gives me the willies. The ending as with all of his endings, was sudden and a bit confusing. I had to read it twice before I realized that the narrator was rescued by a fellow Frenchman and had been imprisoned by the Spanish during the inquisition.
Also, when he first stumbled upon the pit, my first thought was, how did he not fall in it when he was walking around blind?
Sawney Beane
A mercifully quick story of a family of incestuous cannibals. The reason the original pair retreated to the cave and decided to murder and eat passers-by so they don’t have to have anything to do with the world wasn’t very clear. Any mention of cannibalism turns my stomach.
Aurelia
Another story where the creature, in this case a ghoul, doesn’t appear until the end. I connected with the writing better than the Wehr-Wolf and loved the ambiguous ending where Aurelia attacks her husband and he’s driven mad…by fear, by having to kill his ghoul-wife, by becoming a ghoul? Dunno.
Wake Not the Dead
The first sorcerer of the collection. Also the first vampire. But not of the Dracula Ilk. This story predates Stoker’s by over almost 70 years. So the sucking the blood isn’t from the neck but the chest. The hypnotism isn’t a look but a breath. And the vampire was made when the sorcerer grants a widower his wife that his wife were still alive. The dude brought her back from the dead for him. While the aversion to sunlight his there, whether it’s fatal or not is undetermined. The stake through the heart is there but must also include the promise to never think of her with happiness again. Which he ultimately fails to do.
Dream-Woman
I really enjoyed Collins’ The Woman in White and what is largely considered to be the first modern detective novel, The Moonstone. I was excited to read this story. And it was pretty good. His style is very like his contemporary, Dickens. I appreciated his not trying to explain how Isaac saw the woman who would be his wife try to murder him 7 years before they met. It was a style reminiscent of the Woman in White, slightly spooky but not outlandish.
A Night in the Grave
Written in an Irish accent, I couldn't make sense of so much of it. I skipped it. No wonder it was only one of two anonymous work in the collection!
The Case of Last Saxon
A non-Holmes Doyle story that has the same fanciful set of circumstances of a Holmes. But I knew the doctor was going to cut off the lip of his mistress, fooles by the cuckolded husband. Only 8 pages maybe if he had taken more time it would have been better.
Diary of Madman
A judge's diary reveals his everyday encounters with sending men to die has made him become obsessed with killing. So he does. The last person he kills, he also has an innocent man executed in him place.
George Dobson's Expedition to Hell
George, a coach driver, takes a man and his son to a place. George is detained from returning home until he agrees to be back at that place noon the next day. George wakes up. 'Twas but a dream. But then he dies at noon the next day. 'Twas real! He drove to hell!
The Scot accent that appears in the dialog that happens only on the last few pages was jarring. Though not as bad as A Night on a Grave story above.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Like Frankenstein, the exact method of how the transformation happens, is glossed over. Also like Frankie, a lot of the story is told in letters. I had forgotten how second-hand much of the action in stories of the era is.
I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it. But it’d been so long that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s influence fell upon me. Hyde was smaller in the story, being more corrupt. But in movies he’s a big dumb brute.
I had forgotten that the more evil Jekyll did as Hyde the more he became Hyde until he couldn’t even transform back to Jekyll and, I think, he did himself in. How, exactly, wasn’t explained.
The Apparition of Lord Tyrone to Lady Beresford
I had to look up what a Deist was; it’s the belief in a god but one that doesn’t interfere with humanity.
The other anonymous work is about Tyrone coming back after he died to prove that there is a god to Beresford. It was a little uneven and the prophesy Tryone gave to the Lady was dirty pool. She was told she was going to die when she’s 48 but she thinks she’s already 48. When someone tells her she’s only 47, on her birthday, which means she’s turning 48, she dies. So much fainting and unexplained death in this era of literature.
Lost Pyramid
The author of Little Women tries her hand at horror. And it’s a mummy’s curse! An explorer brings back some seeds from a mummy that he unwrapped to feed the fire that would get him found. He also threw in the coffins. It’s amazing the blasphemous ease with which such horrors are perpetrated…
Anyway the adventurer’s fair lady grows the seed, which is cursed and she dies. The End. No better or worse than much of the collection.
In Kropsfberg Keep
Two young men ain’t a-scared a’nuthin! So they spend the night in a haunted castle. One falls asleep and stays so. The other is awakened to find the ghost that haunts those parts beckoning him to a gap in the wall.
Other ghosts dance. The young man is threatened. He shoots the first ghost in the throat. He awakens. His friend has been shot in the throat. I actually liked the drama in this one. It was on the page for once.
Buried Alive
This four-page story reminds me of the myth that the term “graveyard shift” comes from peeps staying in the cemetery at to listen for a bell, which would be wrong when the finger of a person buried alive flailed in his grave. Which gave us “Dead ringer”. Only this time the guy buried alive, and aware the whole time, is shocked out of his trance after his grave is robbed to teach students anatomy and the first scalpel presses down on him.
The Dualitists
Only the second Bram Stoker story I’ve read. Two kids enjoying bashing stuff together. That start with inanimate objects then upgrade to pets, and finally toddlers. The scene where they kill the two toddlers made me sick. Then the toddlers’ father shots his own kids heads off and it made it worse. But when the true killers pin the blame on the father and get away with it, well that makes this the most terrifying story in this collection up to this point.
The Executioner
The first paragraph set it up like the dude had been an executioner for many moons. Turns out it was just once. The twist that he had lopped off his own dad’s head was good. Even though I guessed it. The story was well enough written that I didn’t feel soured by figuring it out.
A String of Pearls
I’d heard of the play and Johnny Depp-helmed flick but the only incarnation I’d seen was the end of Jersey Girl. The intro also ruined the surprise for me by telling me the pies were made from humans. Those two things aside, this was the best story of the collection.
There were plots and subplots and there were fully realized, if not overly complex characters. The writing style, with its purposefully long-winded way of saying simple things, reminded me of Dickens. Also like Dickens it went on too long. The entire chapter in the Mad House when a girl tells her tale to Tobias felt gratuitous. Especially since the exciting finish had already been set up. But that was the style at the time, right? Serialized and paid-by-the-word.
Some subplots were dropped. Sometimes literally. Like the girl from the Mad House, she fell when she and Tobias was escaping. And he left her behind. What happened to her? Other subplots were laid out carefully and made for a great twist. Like Mark being the cook not Thornhill. The author took great pains to say the Mark intended to change his name. But when he gave his name to the pie shop’s owner, I didn’t even think to doubt him. I was all in for him being Thornhill.
This was my first Barnes & Noble book, I had £10 toward a book at Waterstones and picked up this one. It looks and smells delicious, the cover and pages are a delight to touch, and is chokka block with not only little-known stories, but the 1800s blockbusters, like Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, and topped off with Sweeny Todd.
Well worth the money and a treasure for your bookshelf.
Well worth the money and a treasure for your bookshelf.
I enjoyed the irony of this book being 666 pages long. Because of this collection, I finally got around to reading "Frankenstein" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," both of which I'm sure I was supposed to have read in high school. It also contained "Sweeney Todd" so I shall have to go watch that movie.
My favorite story of the whole collection was "The Case of Lady Sannox" by Arthur Conan Doyle. The plot twist genuinely took me by surprise and had me gasping aloud.
Overall, I'm glad I read this book It is definitely evident that these classics are the bases for some of the most popular horror tropes. It's interesting to be able to trace them so far back in history.
My favorite story of the whole collection was "The Case of Lady Sannox" by Arthur Conan Doyle. The plot twist genuinely took me by surprise and had me gasping aloud.
Overall, I'm glad I read this book It is definitely evident that these classics are the bases for some of the most popular horror tropes. It's interesting to be able to trace them so far back in history.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I enjoyed this macabre story collection. It was a good mix of the mildly spooky to the truly terrifying.
I found the Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle stories especially gruesome and would not read again. Sweeney Todd was obviously edgy because of the subject matter, but the narration style was surprisingly light and humorous, bringing some levity to the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Cannibalism, Murder
Moderate: Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol
Minor: Drug use, Incest, Sexual content, Grief, Sexual harassment
slow-paced
It’s so hard to rate a compilation, but this one was well put together! My favorite story was A String of Pearls, or Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet-Street.
dark
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes