QUAINT & CURIOUS VOLUME

'Tales and Poems of the Gothic' is the sub-title of this uncanny, mysterious and eerie collection. It draws us in with its air of mystery and repels us with its violence and darkness, but who were the first practitioners of the now-prevalent Gothic genre? This curated book collects the work of such masters as Edgar Allan Poe, Christina Rossetti and Mary Shelley, who with flickering candles, mysterious castles and chilling ravens first frightened and delighted readers. In 1764, an astonishing and disturbing manuscript was brought to life, first printed in Naples in 1529. It had been translated into English and published under the enticing title The Castle of Otranto. Revelling indecently in fear and transgression, it opened with a young prince crushed to death by an immense helmet on the morning of his wedding. It was an instant sensation across Europe but it was not however an ancient document, but rather a novel by the MP for King's Lynn, Horace Walpole, who feared causing a scandal but observing its popularity, hastily claimed ownership. We can enjoy the feeling of delicious unease which gives off the Gothic sensation like a faint mist rising from the pages, a cold hand reaching out and grasping your hand and tugging you in. This curious volume holds the key to a cabinet of gothic curiosities and begins with The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning, The Song of Wandering Aengus by W. B. Yeats, The Wedding-Knell by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy, The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell. There are extracts from The Castle of Otranto, Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein plus The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins and The Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti among the 17 curious volumes of lore. 266pp.