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Today’s story is one of my favourite vampire tales, ‘Manor’ by sexologist and gay rights activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who wrote the story in 1884 while living in Italy. You can read it here. Many people know Ulrichs more for his work on sexuality. He wrote a number of pamphlets on ‘the riddle of male-maleContinue reading “Day 13 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘Manor’ by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs”

Charlotte Riddell was an Irish author though this is a distinctly Scottish style tale of the demonic. You can read the story here. It’s a short tale but effective in that short space. I’ll leave aside the framing device of a group of people trapped in a manse by bad weather. I’ll also leave asideContinue reading “Day 12 of ‘A Scare A Day’ – ‘Sandy the Tinker’ by Charlotte Riddell”

In 1929, M. R. James’ essay ‘Some Remarks on Ghost Stories’ appeared in the special Christmas edition of The Bookman. You can read the whole thing here if you are so inclined! In it he, quite famously, claims that he does ‘not think there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu’s;Continue reading “Day 11 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Familiar’ by Sheridan Le Fanu”

Today’s story is ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who is usually talked about in relation to her sensation and particularly Lady Audley’s Secret (1862). Today’s story can be read here. It was originally published in The Strand with some wonderfully evocative illustrations. I’ll give them to you in order with a little commentary.Continue reading “Day 10 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ by Mary Elizabeth Braddon”

I’m starting to fall a little behind with these blogs! Reading a story a day and writing up thoughts on it takes quite a bit of time, it turns out. Especially when you’re reading the story in Russian. ‘Queen of Spades’ or Пиковая дама (pikovaya dama) was one of the first stories I ever readContinue reading “Day 9 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Queen of Spades’ by Alexander Pushkin”

Today we’re reading a classic of early American Gothic literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’, which you can read here. For an interesting modern take on the story which resets it in a different historical era and location, I can recommend the music video to Brandon Flowers ‘Can’t Deny My Love’ which you can watchContinue reading “Day 8 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne”

Fittingly for our first Scottish Gothic tale on the list, I spent the day in Edinburgh. I even managed to find a really useful collection of Hogg’s shorter fiction. The ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, of course, is James Hogg whose story ‘The Brownie of the Black Haggs’ was our story for Day 7. You can read itContinue reading “Day 7 ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Brownie of the Black Haggs’ by James Hogg”

October is dedicated to crime here at Romancing the Gothic it (reading about it, not doing it!) Today (7th October), we’re joined by Jordan Welsh to talk ‘How Cosy is your Crime?’ and he has provided a reading and watch list to get people started delving into the world of ‘cosy crime’, right from itsContinue reading “Cosy Crime Reading (and watch) List from Jordan Welsh”

When people think of the Gothic, Mary Shelley’s name is bound to come up. Her early masterpiece Frankenstein (1818) is one of the first examples people come up with when naming Gothic novels. For today’s story, I wanted to introduce some of her lesser known writing. She was a fairly prolific author with several novelsContinue reading “Day 6 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘The Transformation’ by Mary Shelley”

At the moment, I’m working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham University on a Byron project and am based at Newstead Abbey (Byron’s ancestral home) so it was inevitable that Byron was going to find his way into this year’s list. Today we’re reading his relatively short poem Darkness which you can read here andContinue reading “Day 5 of ‘A Scare a Day’ – ‘Darkness’ by Lord Byron”