December 2023: Georgia Authors (who are not Margaret Mitchell)

The December 2023 meeting surveyed Georgia Authors.  To avoid seeing multiple copies of Gone With the Wind—and, more importantly, to spotlight other Georgia writers—the group purposely excluded Margaret Mitchell.  As a result, collectors came up with an impressive array of poets, essayists, novelists, storytellers, and historians.  The highlighted Georgia authors are presented here in chronological order.

 

Thomas Holley Chivers (1809 – 1858)

Nacoochee: Or, The Beautiful Star, with Other Poems

Chivers, T. H.  Nacoochee: Or, The Beautiful Star, with Other Poems.  New York: W. E. Dean, Printer, 1837.  The author's third published collection of poetry.  This copy bears a presentation inscription from the author to the editor of The Sunday Morning News on the front free end paper.

"To the Editor of the Sunday Morning News.
Presented by the Author with his sincere respects."

Thomas Holley Chivers was born in Washington, Georgia, in 1809.  He trained as a physician but practiced medicine only briefly before turning to writing.  Chivers published ten books of poetry.  He has been called the "Lost Poet" of Georgia and has mostly been forgotten except for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe.  Poe’s writing of "The Raven" was influenced by some of Chivers’s poetry.  He later traveled throughout many parts of the country, but always returned to Georgia.  Chivers is cited as an influence on Margaret Mitchell, and she intended to write a biography of him shortly before her death.

 

Maurice Thompson (1844 – 1901)

Stories of the Cherokee Hills

Thompson, Maurice.  Stories of the Cherokee Hills.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898.  A collection of seven fictional stories of both white and black Georgians, set mostly in the North Georgia mountains, spanning the slave days, the civil war, and the period of reconstruction.  This copy is signed by the author on the title page.

James Maurice Thompson moved with his family to Georgia as a young child and lived on his father’s plantation in the Cherokee Valley.  He and his brother become expert archers, hunting throughout Georgia from the Okefenokee Swamp to the north Georgia mountains and beyond.  His best-known book is The Witchery of Archery; the first edition of 1877 is extremely rare and very desirable by modern day archers.  He published 22 books in his lifetime, including books of poetry, novels, and essay collections.

 

Joel Chandler Harris (1848 – 1908)

Uncle Remus: His Songs and HIs Sayings

Harris, Joel Chandler.  Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings.  New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898.  A collection of animal stories, folklore, and songs Harris learned as a teenager from the black storytellers he encountered at the Turnwold Plantation while working for The Countryman newspaper.  Harris constructed the Uncle Remus character to narrate the stories in the African American dialect in which he heard them.  This copy is inscribed by the author on the front free end paper.

"For Little Ruth: with the affectionate regards of Joel Chandler Harris"

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1848.  He attended the Eatonton Academy for Boys, where one of his teachers later recalled his early writing ability.  He was a voracious reader of books and newspapers.  He began his writing career writing for the Macon Telegraph newspaper, though soon found that journalism did not satisfy his literary ambitions.  He later joined the writing staff of the Atlanta Constitution, where he was given an opportunity to take over a regular column which allowed him to write more creatively.  Harris's Uncle Remus stories first appeared in this newspaper column.  He published 10 collections of Uncle Remus and Mr. Rabbit stories; in total, he published 25 books in his lifetime plus 4 posthumous new works.  In 2000, Harris was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855 – 1938)

Eneas Africanus

Edwards, Harry Stillwell.  Eneas Africanus.  Macon, GA: Eneas Africanus Press, 1954.  Reprint.  First published in 1920, this pro-slavery propaganda story tells the story of Eneas, a former slave still faithful to his old master, George Tommey, who is sent out in search of "Tommeysville."  Eneas returns many years later with a family and all of Tommey's family treasures.

Edwards, Harry Stillwell.  Eneas Africanus.  Gatlinburg, TN: Historic Press \ South, n.d. (1973).  Facsimile reprint of the 1920 edition by J. W. Burke Company.

Harry Stillwell Edwards was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1855.  He earned his law degree from Mercer University in 1877 and was admitted to the bar but never practiced law, choosing to be a writer instead.  His early novels were mysteries which focused on Southern aristocratic families.  He turned his attention to journalism and became the co-owner/co-editor of the Macon Evening News and the owner/editor Macon Telegraph where he contributed a popular monthly column, "What Comes Down the Creek."  Writing later in the post-Reconstruction era, Edwards authored and self-published pro-slavery fantasies, propaganda literature still popular in the South at the time.  In all, he authored 19 novels and short story collections.

 

Erskine Caldwell (1903 – 1987)

You Have Seen Their Faces

Caldwell, Erskine and Margaret Bourke-White.  You Have Seen Their Faces.  New York: Viking Press, 1940.  Second edition.  First published in 1937, Caldwell wrote the social commentary for photographer Bourke-White's raw portraiture of the share-cropping South during the Great Depression.  The book is regarded as Bourke-White's most successful single work.  Caldwell's forceful commentary exemplifies his political sympathies with the working class; he often wrote stories of workers and farmers portraying their lives and struggles.  Caldwell and Bourke-White married two years after the book's publication.

Erskine Preston Caldwell was born in Moreland, Georgia, in 1903.  His father was a minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and Caldwell was profoundly influenced by his father's conservative, social reform theology and his parents' assistance to the poor in Wrens, Georgia, where his father pastored in Caldwell's teens.  He often wrote about poverty, racism, and social injustice in the American South.  These themes are prominent in his two most acclaimed works, Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933).  Caldwell authored 25 novels, 12 nonfiction collections, 2 autobiographies, 2 children's books, and 150 short stories.  He also edited the 28-volume series American Folkways.  In 2000, Caldwell was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Kenneth Coleman (1916 – 1999)

The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763-1789

Coleman, Kenneth.  The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763-1789.  Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1958.  This revision of Coleman's doctoral dissertation provides a detailed description of the events leading up to the Revolutionary war, the years of fighting, and the readjustment after independence.  It analyzes the political, social, and economic impacts of the war throughout Georgia.  This copy is signed and dated on the title page.

Georgia Journeys, 1732-1754

Temple, Sarah Gober and Kenneth Coleman.  Georgia Journeys, 1732-1754.  Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1961.  Coleman and Temple use primary accounts of the original settlers of Georgia to trace the development of Georgia from the arrival of the original colonists in 1732 to England's takeover of the colony in 1754.  They focus on the problems and challenges encountered in establishing the colony, as described by the original and early settlers themselves.

Kenneth Coleman was born in Devereux, Georgia, in 1916.  He was a professor of history at the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia (now Georgia State University) before moving to the main Athens campus of UGA in 1955.  He authored five books on colonial and revolutionary Georgia.  He served as the general editor and a contributor to A History of Georgia (1977), a project encouraged earlier by then-Governor Jimmy Carter.  He also edited six volumes (published between 1976 and 1989) of the 67-volume Colonial Records of Georgia and co-edited the 2-volume Dictionary of Georgia Biography (1983).  In 1992, Coleman received the Governor's Award in the Humanities, presented by Governor Zell Miller, who had been an undergraduate student of Coleman's.

 

Jimmy Carter (b. 1924)

Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President

Carter, Jimmy.  Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President.  New York: Bantam Books, 1982.  Carter's memoir of his time in the Oval Office is a candid glimpse into both the personal life and political world of the 39th President.  He details the highs and lows of his time in office, from the triumph of the Camp David Middle East peace summit to the frustrations of the Iran hostage crisis.  This edition is limited to 2,500 copies and is hand numbered and signed on the limitation page.

Numbered and signed limitation page

James Earl Carter, Jr. was born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924.  He began a life of public service with a stint in the Navy before serving two terms in the Georgia General Assembly.  He became the 76th Governor of Georgia in 1971 and the 39th President of the United States in 1977.  After leaving the White House, he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded the Carter Center, a nonpartisan public policy center promoting human rights and furthering the eradication of infectious diseases.  In 2002, Carter earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center.  He has authored 32 books and co-authored one book with his wife, Rosalynn, and one book with his daughter, Amy.  In 2006, Carter was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Flannery O'Connor (1925 – 1964)

The Complete Stories

O’Connor, Flannery.  The Complete Stories.  New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1971.  Posthumously published, this short story collection comprises the stories from A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), along with several previously unavailable stories. The Complete Stories won the National Book Award for Fiction 1972.

Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925.  She attended high school in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she worked as the art editor for the school newspaper.  While attending Georgia State College for Women, she drew cartoons for the student newspaper.  After college, she attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she met Andrew Lytle, who first published her stories in the Sewanee Review.  She published two novels and one short story collection during her short lifetime; a second short story collection was published shortly after her death.  Posthumously, seven books have been published containing her letters, book reviews, journal entries, cartoons, and short prose.  In 2000, Flannery O'Connor was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Terry Kay (1938 – 2020)

To Dance With the White Dog

Kay, Terry.  To Dance With the White Dog.  Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, Ltd., 1993.  Fifth printing.  First published in 1990, the novel began as a nonfiction celebration of Kay's parents' marriage.  Kay's father was visited by a white dog after his wife's death, and Kay decided to fictionalize his parent's long, loving relationship and the event with the white dog to tell a universal love story.  The novel was adapted to a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in 1993 starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, for which Cronyn won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie.  This copy is signed by the author on the title page.

Terry Kay was born in Royston, Georgia, in 1938.  He began his career as a writer and critic for the Dekalb Decatur News and the Atlanta Journal before becoming a novelist.  His first novel, The Year the Lights Came On, was published in 1976; his second novel, After Eli (1981) earned him the Georgia Writer's Association award for Author of the Year.  To Dance with the White Dog garnered Kay the Southeastern Library Association's Outstanding Author of the Year distinction in 1991, and the book was twice nominated for the American Booksellers Association's Book of the Year award.  He authored 14 novels, a juvenile Christmas story, 2 nonfiction books, a play, a teleplay, as well as the adaptations of three of his novels to film.  In 2006, Kay was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

The Temple of My Familiar

Walker, Alice.  The Temple of My Familiar.  San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.  First edition.  Walker's fifth novel interweaves stories of its five central characters; it is told through multi-perspective narration as each character tells her or his own story.  Celie and Shug, the main characters of The Color Purple (1982), Walker's third and best-known novel, appear as supporting characters, though The Temple of My Familiar is not a sequel.  This copy is signed and dated by the author on the half title page.

Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1944.  She attended segregated schools there through high school and graduated as class valedictorian from the only Black high school in the town.  Much of her fiction, like The Temple of My Familiar and The Color Purple (1982), takes place in unnamed Southern places which resemble her middle Georgia upbringing.  The Color Purple earned her the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.  She has published 13 novels and short story collections, 11 poetry collections, and 11 nonfiction books.  In 2001, Walker was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Michael Bishop (1945 – 2023)

No Enemy But Time

Bishop, Michael.  No Enemy But Time.  New York: Timescape/Simon & Schuster, 1982.  John Monegal (aka Joshua Kampa), a black American who regularly has intense dreams of prehistoric Africa, is invited to join a top-secret government time travel project.  He is sent back millions of years into the past to central Africa, where he joins a tribe of protohumans.  When he returns to his present-day reality, the reader is left with an unanswered question: was it time travel or a dream?  No Enemy But Time won the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Brittle Innings

Bishop, Michael.  Brittle Innings.  New York: Bantam Books, 1994.  Brittle Innings is a sequel of sorts to Frankenstein.  Frankenstein's monster makes his way to the American South during World War II and joins a minor league baseball team in Georgia.  The story confronts racism, misogyny, and other social ills against the backdrop of war while also enjoying the great American pastime.  Brittle Innings won the 1995 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Michael Lawson Bishop lived most of his adult life in Pine Mountain, Georgia.  He earned his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English from the University of Georgia.  He joined its English department faculty in 1972, but two years later devoted himself to writing full time.  Georgia is a frequent setting for Bishop's fiction; several of his novels and short stories take place throughout present-day Georgia while others occur in futuristic Atlanta.  He won multiple writing awards including 2 Nebula Awards, the Locus Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.  He authored 15 solo novels, 3 collaborative novels, 11 story collections, 2 poetry collections, over 150 pieces of short fiction, and many essays.  In 2018, Bishop was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

 

Becky Albertalli (b. 1982)

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

Albertalli, Becky.  Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda.  New York: Balzer + Bray, 2015.  First edition.  Albertalli's debut novel tells the story of Simon and his online relationship with "Blue," another student at his high school who has not yet revealed his identity.  In a climactic scene, Blue finally reveals himself as a known character throughout the story.  Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda was adapted to film as Love, Simon in 2018, starring Nick Robinson as Simon and Keiynan Lonsdale as Bram/"Blue."  The movie was filmed in multiple locations throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area.  This copy is signed by the author on the title page.

Becky Albertalli was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1982.  She and her family still reside in the Atlanta metropolitan area.  A former psychologist, she left her practice in 2012 with the birth of her first son and decided to pursue writing as a career.  Her first novel, Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, was published three years later.  Simon earned Albertalli the 2105 William C. Morris Award from the American Library Association and the 2017 German Youth Literature Prize.  She has published 9 novels, 3 of which were co-authored with other writers.  In addition to Simon being adapted to film, the movie rights to two of her other novels have been purchased and are in development.

 

Taylor Brown (b. 1982)

Wingwalkers

Brown, Taylor.  Wingwalkers.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022.  This fictional story is inspired by an anecdote in William Faulkner's biography, in which Faulkner meets two barnstormers funding their cross-country journey by performing daredevil arial shows.  Brown follows his biplane pilot, Zeno, and his wingwalking wife, Della, as they cheat death along the way from Georgia to Hollywood, where Della dreams of living.  The novel builds up to their chance meeting with Faulkner in New Orleans.

Taylor Brown was born in Brunswick, Georgia, in 1982.  He grew up on the Georgia coast and attended the University of Georgia.  After some international travel, he settled in Savannah, Georgia.  He published his first short stories in 2008.  He has published six novels and one short story collection.  He is a recipient of the Montana Prize for Fiction and has been a finalist for several writing awards, including being a three-time finalist for the Southern Book Prize.  In 2021, Taylor Brown was named Georgia Author of the Year by the Georgia Writers Association.

 

November 2023: Shakespeare

Title page of the First Folio (facsimile)

In November 1623, the first printing of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies was completed.  Commonly known as the First Folio, this collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays was assembled and published 7 years after the Bard's death by his friends and fellow thespians John Heminge and Henry Condell to preserve and commemorate these great works.  Half of the plays had not been previously published, and it is believed that many of them would have been lost or forgotten completely had it not been for the efforts of Heminge and Condell.  The First Folio not only immortalized William Shakespeare but is considered one of the most influential books ever published.  Only 750 copies were originally printed, and only 235 copies are known to remain.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, the November 2023 meeting was devoted to Shakespeare.  Members presented books either by or about William Shakespeare.  While no members of the Atlanta Antiquarian Book Circle possess a First Folio (or a Second, Third, or Fourth Folio for that matter), one member shared a scarce copy of the first photolithographic facsimile of the First Folio published in 1866.

The Works of William Shakespeare

Facsimile of the First Folio (Day & Son, 1866)

Shakespeare, William.  Shakespeare: The First Collected Edition of the Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: A Reproduction in Exact Facsimile of the Famous First Folio, 1623, by the Newly-Discovered Process of Photo-Lithography.  London: Day & Son, 1866.  This facsimile was produced under the supervision of Howard Staunton (1810-1874), an English chess master and Shakespeare scholar/editor.  It was the first true facsimile ever created; previous printers had only been able to approximate page-for-page reprints using close-to-original typeface.

A Catalogue of the several Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies contained in this volume

Staunton’s facsimile was issued serially to subscribers in 16 parts between 1864 and 1866; complete sets were then individually custom bound by the owners.  The quantity of copies printed is unknown but believed to be small.  The remaining quires which were not sold serially were bound by Day & Son bearing a contemporary interpretation of the Shakespeare coat of arms in gilt on the front cover and sold on the 250th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.  Copies in the publisher’s binding are rare.  This copy bears some amateur repair work but maintains the original armorial binding.

Sample page, from Romeo & Juliet

The Works of Shakespeare

Shakespeare, William.  The Works of Shakespeare.  London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1899.  Edited by Israel Gollancz.  Complete in 12 volumes.  This illustrated set was uniformly bound in brown leather with gilt lettering and ornamentation and serially issued from 1899 to 1904.  Gollancz's edited The Works of Shakespeare became the definitive text of Shakespeare’s plays, poems, and sonnets for the Twentieth Century and is still used today.

Title page of Volume 1

Israel Gollancz (1863-1930) was a professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London, and a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare, in particular.  He later published a 40-volume uniform edition of the complete works of Shakespeare in pocket-size volumes, known as the "Temple" Shakespeare, which was the most popular Shakespeare edition of its day.  As Honorary Secretary of the Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee, in 1916, Gollancz edited A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, an anthology of responses to Shakespeare by an international panel of scholars, thinkers, and prominent figures of the time.  

 

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, William.  The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  Philadelphia: The Shakespeare Club, n.d. (circa 1905).  Garrick Edition.  With a preface, glossary, etc., by Israel Gollancz.  Complete in 10 volumes.  Uniformly bound in brown leather.  An American edition of Gollancz's The Works of Shakespeare (above).  Volume I contains a biography of Shakespeare along with the first three comedies.  Volumes II though IX contain the comedies, histories, and tragedies.  Volume X contains the last 2 tragedies along with Shakespeare's poems and sonnets.

Title page of Volume 1

 

Tales from Shakespeare

Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb.  Tales from Shakespeare.  Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903.  Introductory Preface by Andrew Lang.  Illustrations by Robert Anning Bell.  The Lambs' retelling of Shakespeare's plays for young readers is as imitation of Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Thomas Hodgkins.  In paraphrasing and redesigning Shakespeare for youth, the Lambs copy the blank verse unaltered but not printed as verse.  They hope "to cheat the young readers into the belief that they are reading prose."  The Tales "are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used wherever it seemed possible to bring them in" (preface).

Illustration by Robert Anning Bell

 

More Stories from Shakespeare

Chisholm, Louey, ed.  More Stories from Shakespeare.  New York: E. P. Dutton, n.d. (circa 1900).  Part of a series of classic literature retold for children, published in the early 1900s.  This is the second of the Shakespeare titles.

 

The Annotated Shakespeare

Shakespeare, William.  The Annotated Shakespeare.  New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978.  Edited, with Introductions, Notes, a Biography, and Bibliography by A. L. Rowse.  Complete in 3 volumes.  Alfred Leslie Rowse (1903-1997) was a poet and Elizabethan historian.  Late in his career, he turned his attention to Shakespeare, authoring 9 books on the Bard.  He made bold claims and "discoveries" about both Shakespeare's life and works, often failing to cite other scholars and dismissing their critiques of his views.  In Shakespeare the Man (1978), he even claimed to solve the identity of the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare’s sonnets, an assertion rejected by most scholars.  Many of Rowse's questionable and disproved "discoveries" can be found in The Annotated Shakespeare.  This set, in very good condition, includes the publisher's slipcase and each volume retains its dust jacket.

 

Books About Shakespeare and his Works

A Short Life of Shakespeare with the Sources

Williams, Charles. A Short Life of Shakespeare with the Sources. London: Oxford University Press, 1933.  An abridgement of William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (1930), in 2 volumes, by Edmund Chambers.  Charles Williams (1886-1945) was a poet and novelist who late in his career moved to Oxford where he joined the Inklings, C. S. Lewis's literary society.  In addition to abridging Chambers's tome, Williams wrote a play about Shakespeare, A Myth of Shakespeare (1930), and profiled the playwright in his Stories of Great Names (1937).

 

Coined by Shakespeare

McQuain, Jeffrey and Stanley Malless.  Coined by Shakespeare: Words & Meanings First Penned by the Bard.  Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster, 1998.  A dictionary with 208 entries of words or phrases first used by William Shakespeare.  Where similar books focus on oft-repeated unusual phrases and familiar quotations from Shakespeare, Coined by Shakespeare focuses on what are now ordinary words common to the English lexicon, such as excitement, marketable, quarrelsome, discontent, lackluster, reinforcement, and never-ending.  McQuain and Malless cite the play where the word is first used and trace subtle shifts in its meaning from Shakespeare's intended meaning within the context of the play to its usage today.  The book also contains a chronology of Shakespeare's plays and quizzes about those works.

 

Will in the World

Greenblatt, Stephen.  Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.  Greenblatt (b. 1943) is an American Shakespearian historian who has authored five books on Shakespeare as well as editing The Norton Shakespeare (2015).  Greenblatt's biography explores significant events, people, and circumstances in Shakespeare's own life and shows where these personal details show up in his plays.  Greenblatt, for example, delves into the death of Shakespeare's own son, Hamnet, in 1596, and then shows where Shakespeare seemingly writes through his grief in the deaths of several plays' characters, most notably Ophelia’s burial ceremony in Hamlet (1600-1601), which Greenblatt calls "the most famous burial scene in literature."  When published, Will in the World was quickly acclaimed by both scholars and general readers, attracting more readers than other contemporary books on Shakespeare.  It was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

 

The Book of William

Collins, Paul.  The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World.  New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.  Collins (b. 1969) traces the history of the First Folio through time and place to show how it has been received across centuries and culture to become the "immortal" text and one of the most influential booked ever printed.  He considers the humble transfer of the book through the generations of a family to the astronomical prices garnered by Sotheby’s auction house.  He explores the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century quests for lost copies of the First Folio and modern-day hunts for unknown, yet-to-be-discovered copies. 

 

Shakespeare: The Illustrated Updated Edition

Bryson, Bill.  Shakespeare: The Illustrated Update Edition.  New York: Harper, 2009.  Bill Bryson (b. 1951), a journalist and nonfiction author, first published Shakespeare: The World as Stage in 2007.  The biography explored the social, cultural, and political context of Shakespeare's work.  It also attempted to separate fact from fiction about Shakespeare's life, teasing out known and provable facts from myths, theories, and unprovable lore.  This aspect of Bryson's biography drew much attention and resulted in a need to update the text.  The updated and illustrated edition was released two years later as interest in the book remained strong.

 

October 2023: Gothic Fiction or Horror

Getting into the Halloween spirit at the beginning of the month, the topic for the October 2023 meeting was Gothic Fiction or Horror.  Beyond classic Gothic fiction, collectors were encouraged to include other sub-genres, including Modern, Southern, and Urban Gothic.  One collector presented a pre-Gothic work to show its influence on a classic Gothic novel, Frankenstein, while another collector presented Shelley's story itself.  Beyond the fictional works, one collector also shared a nonfiction book on horror and Gothic tales, which touched on many of the fictional works shown during the meeting.

 

Pre-Gothic Influence

Paradise Lost

Milton, John.  Paradise Lost.  New York: Pollard & Moss, 1887.  With Fifty Full-Page Illustrations by Gustave Doré.  First published in 1667, Milton's epic poem predates the Gothic genre by a century, but the aesthetic and elements of the genre are abundant in the work.  Mary Shelley was strongly influenced by Paradise Lost, and it appears in multiple ways throughout Frankenstein.  Victor Frankenstein and the monster both quote Milton.  Frankenstein’s name, Victor, is derived from Milton's references to God as "the victor," and the monster refers to himself as the fallen angel, a term Milton uses for Satan.  Shelley writes that the monster reads Paradise Lost in the novel.  [See Mary Shelley's Frankenstein below.]

 

Classic Gothic Fiction

The Castle of Otranto

Walpole, Horace.  The Castle of Otranto.  London: The Folio Society, 1976.  Introduction by Devendra P. Varma.  Lithographs by Charles Keeping.  First published in 1764, The Castle of Otranto is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, inspiring a new literary genre popular throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  The medieval aesthetic established by Walpole not only shaped the Gothic stories of his contemporaries and the next generation of writers such as Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker—all shown below—but also continues to shape Gothic literature today.

 

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Radcliffe, Ann.  The Mysteries of Udolpho.  London: J.M. Dent, 1962.  In 2 volumes.  The Mysteries of Udolpho was first published in 1794 in four volumes and is regarded as the archetype of the Gothic novel.  Its elements of physical and psychological terror, questionably supernatural events, and a scheming villain and persecuted heroine are closely imitated by other Gothic writers.  Radcliffe's characters and the story itself is alluded to, if not directly quoted, by other writers such as Poe in "The Oval Portrait" and Henry James in The Turning of the Screw (see below).  Non-Gothic writers such as Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Anthony Trollope, and Herman Melville also reference Radcliffe and her story in their works.

 

The Monk

Lewis, Matthew.  The Monk.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.  Introduction by Stephen King.  The Monk: A Romance was first published in 1796 in three volumes.  It was published anonymously, listing the author only as "M. L."  The book reviewed well, and subsequent editions were published under Lewis’s full name.  The novel drew praise both for Lewis's attention to the horror aspect of the novel and its convoluted plot.  These two elements helped grow the genre and made it one of the most important Gothic novels of the time.

Lewis, Matthew.  The Monk.  New York: Evergreen / Grove Press, 1959.  Introduction by John Berryman.  One of the plot lines of the book traces the corruption and downfall of Ambrosio, the monk.  The scandalous plot caused some controversy at the time, triggering considerable distress within Lewis's family.  Lewis attempted to make reparation with his family by revising the work and expurgating "every syllable which could be grounded the slightest construction of immorality," he wrote to his father in a letter in advance of the fourth edition, revised, published in 1798.  This copy is a reprint of the first unexpurgated American edition, returning to the original text of the third edition.  [Photographed below with Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.]

 

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Shelley, Mary W.  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.  Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1833.  In 2 volumes.  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published anonymously in 1818, in three volumes, with a preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  The second edition, published in 1823, credited Mary Shelley as the author and divided the publication into two volumes.  This 1833 American edition continued the 2-volume division of the second English edition even though a "popular" edition in one volume was released by a British publisher in 1831.  That edition was heavily edited by Shelley to make the story less radical and has become the more widely published edition today.  Some readers and scholars, however, prefer the original version of the story, claiming it preserves the spirit of the genesis of the story.  Mary wrote Frankenstein as her contribution to a competition among friends—Mary, her husband Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori—in 1816 to see who could write the best horror story.

Nota Bene: John Polidori's contribution to the horror story competition was "The Vampyre," a short story first published in 1819.  Polidori’s story was the first published modern vampire story and is considered the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre, influencing such works as Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897 (see below).

 

Melmoth the Wanderer

Maturin, Charles.  Melmoth the Wanderer.  London: The Folio Society, 1993.  Melmoth the Wanderer was first published in 1820.  The plot leans heavily into the supernatural as the titular character sells his soul to the devil in exchange for an extended lifespan.  By highlighting the supernatural element of the Gothic genre, H. P. Lovecraft in Supernatural Horror in Literature professes Melmoth the Wanderer as "an enormous stride in the evolution of the horror-tale" (see below) and Devendra Varma in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural describes it as "the crowning achievement of the Gothic Romance."

 

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

Poe, Edgar Allan.  "The Fall of the House of Usher."  Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Volume V, July to December 1839.  Poe's short story was first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1839 before being revised for inclusion in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840).  In the introduction to a later collection of Poe stories, G. R. Thomson writes, "the tale has long been hailed as a masterpiece of Gothic horror."  The story develops themes of isolation, madness, and the metaphysical to craft its Gothic aesthetic.  The element of the physical deterioration and crumbling of the physical house in the story is an oft-repeated device in Gothic horror, harkening back to Walpole's The Castle of Otranto.

 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Dickens, Charles.  The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  London: Macmillan & Co., 1925.  The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Dickens's final, though unfinished, novel.  The book was scheduled to be published in twelve installments from April 1870 to February 1871, but Dickens died in June 1870 before completing the story.  Chapman & Hall published the six completed installments from April to September 1870.  In part because the novel is incomplete, Dickensian readers have debated whether Drood is a Gothic novel since the ending is unknown and the murderer and motive are not revealed.  Some of Dickens's other works, notably Oliver Twist and Bleak House, have been described as Gothic due to the descriptions of the slums of London, the sheer depravity of the poor, and the conditions in which they live; thus, these novels are often called "London Gothic," depicting the seedier side of the city.  London’s opium dens feature prominently in Drood, especially after Edwin's death when the other characters all migrate to London.  It is here, near the end of Dickens's completed installments, that London's darker side begins to emerge and moves the story to what by more modern classifications would be considered Urban Gothic.

 Dickens, Charles.  Edwin Drood and Reprinted Pieces.  London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., n.d. (c. 1891).  The "Daily News" Memorial Edition, with sixteen illustrations.  Contains The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) and the short story collection Reprinted Pieces (1861).

 

The Monk and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Stevenson, Robert Louis.  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Weir of Hermiston.  London: Folio Society, 2006.  Illustrated by Grahame Baker Smith.  Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was first published in 1886 and is considered a defining book of the Gothic horror genre for its interplay of the dualities of good versus evil and civility versus barbarism.  While many Gothic writers employ supernatural causes of evil, Stevenson draws on Freudian theories of the conscious and unconscious mind to explore the idea of the evil within oneself, an evil far more sinister and frightening than any external source.  This Folio Society edition is published together with Stevenson's unfinished novel, Weir of Hermiston.

 

The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde, Oscar.  The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.  The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in the July 1890 issue.  Without Wilde's knowledge, the story was heavily edited with a section of more than 500 words removed, fearing the story was indecent as originally submitted.  When it was first published in book form the following year, some of the deleted content was restored, but some material was still edited to tone down the homosexual content.  In this 2011 unexpurgated edition, The Picture of Dorian Gray finally appears for the first time as originally written by Wilde.  His only novel, Wilde's tale is hailed as a classic of late-Victorian Gothic literature.

 

Dracula

Stoker, Bram.  Dracula.  New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.  Photoplay edition with illustrations from the Universal Picture produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr.  Dracula was first published in 1897.  Some contemporary critics reviewed the book positively noting its effective use of horror, but others critiqued it negatively for being excessively frightening.  With mixed reviews, the book was not an instant success and Stoker earned very little money from it during his lifetime.  The book surged in popularity after Universal Studios purchased the movie rights and released the 1931 film Dracula.  The film adaptation gave Dracula a second life (pun intended) and helped cement the novel as a classic of Gothic fiction.

Title page and frontispiece with studio still of
Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Helen Chandler as Mina

Nota Bene: When Stoker applied for copyright in the United States, he provided only one copy of the book instead of two to the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.  Having not fully complied with US copyright law, Dracula prematurely fell into the public domain.  This error was not discovered until Universal Studios purchased the rights to adapt the story to film.  US publishers, therefore, were able to reprint the book without license.  Also, because the story—and, more importantly, the character Dracula—is in the public domain, countless Dracula movies have been made without securing rights, each renewing interest in the original story.  As a result, Dracula has never been out of print. 

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Wynne-Jones, Tim.  Dracula by Bram Stoker.  Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997.  Illustrated by Laszlo Gal.  Dracula by Bram Stoker is a fully illustrated abridgement of the classic novel targeted to young readers.

 

The Turn of the Screw

James, Henry.  The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers, and Seven Other Stories.  London: Collins, 1956.  With an introduction by Michael Swan.  The Turn of the Screw was originally published in 12 serial installments in Collier's Weekly from January to April 1898.  Later that year, it was published in book form in The Two Magics together with James's "Covering End."  James made many minor revisions to the text for inclusion in the 1908 New York Edition, a 24-volume collection of his works published and released between 1907 and 1909.  Early reviews of the 1898 publication quickly located The Turn of the Screw within the canon of Gothic fiction.  It was hailed as a brilliant ghost story and praised for its ability to frighten the reader.  Initial reviewers bought into the supernatural ghost story form, but later critics proffered the supernatural elements as figments of one character's imagination.  The question of real versus perceived supernatural events has been an ongoing tension of the Gothic genre since Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho.

 

Modern Gothic Fiction

The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story

Hill, Susan.  The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story.  New York: David R. Godine, 1986.  First published in 1983, The Woman in Black is a Victorian-styled traditional ghost story about a mysterious specter which haunts a small Edwardian English town.  The book is acclaimed for the author's ability to create not simply a setting but an atmosphere for horror; and, though thrilling from the start, Hill is able to pace the suspense in what critics have called "controlled horror."

 

A Density of Souls

Rice, Christopher.  A Density of Souls.  New York: Hyperion, 2000.  A Density of Souls is the debut novel of Christopher Rice, the son of Anne Rice.  Seeking to distinguish his own writing from that of his mother's horror novels—as well as the horror novels of his aunt, Alice Borchardt—Christopher preferred to call his early works "supernatural thrillers."  The story is set in New Orleans—where Christopher was living and caring for his mother while she recovered from a medical crisis when he started writing the book—and, like Dickens, Rice explores the seedier side of the city.  Rice said he "put the city through such hell, both figuratively and literally," as he wrote what became a quintessential Urban Gothic thriller.

 

Light Before Day

Rice, Christopher.  Light Before Day.  New York: Hyperion, 2005.  As Rice developed as a writer, he became more comfortable with his inclination to write horror.  He relinquished his self-described "supernatural thriller" style and by his third novel, Light Before Day, fully leaned into the Urban Gothic thriller.  The novel is set in Los Angeles, where the main character, a journalist, must enter the seedy underbelly of the city to uncover a hidden story, putting his own life in great peril in the process.  Rice crafts a modern noir thriller in a Gothic 21st century California landscape.

 

Marina: A Gothic Tale

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz.  Marina: A Gothic Tale.  New York: Little Brown and Co., 2014.  Marina is a young adult novel first published in 1999.  It is a supernatural mystery set in 1970s Barcelona, where the main characters navigate and explore haunting trails, abandoned mansions, and hidden gardens, creating a multitude of mysterious settings where horror awaits.

 

Nonfiction

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips.  Supernatural Horror in Literature.  New York: Ben Abramson, 1945.  Introduction by August Derleth.  "Supernatural Horror in Literature" is an extended essay first published in the one-issue magazine The Recluse in August 1927.  It was updated and expanded in book form in Lovecraft's The Outsider and Others in 1939.  Lovecraft surveys the development of horror fiction and evaluates the achievements of the genre as of the time of publication.  Closely following a similar work, Edith Birkhead's The Tale of Terror (1921), Lovecraft traces horror fiction from early Gothic horror to later Edwardian thrillers.  Lovecraft expounds on many of the writers and works shown above, including The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, Frankenstein, Melmoth the Wanderer, "The Fall of the House of Usher," The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and The Turn of the Screw.