Thomas Loring &Co. Mary Ann Bird

Mary Ann Bird

Spell-Bound

Ghost stories of a forgotten Victorian

The discovery of a collection of mid-Victorian ghost stories (dated 1865, but issued for Christmas 1864) that has gone unrecognized until now by genre bibliographers, scholars and collectors, is, we feel, a newsworthy event in itself. That the quality of the stories is not merely competent but above average makes this front page news. This is no mere curiosity item for the completist but a solid collection that deserves a place on the same shelf with the supernatural fiction of Rhoda Broughton, Mary Braddon, Amelia Edwards, and mistresses Riddell, Wood and Oliphant. The best stories here will find their way into future anthologies just as their author will find her way into that select sorority of Victorian women who helped build the foundation for the modern supernatural short story. In fact, leaving aside the ambiguously fictional collections of Mrs. Catherine Crowe (1948, 1850, 1859), Spell-Bound may very well have been the first collection of exclusively supernatural short stories written by a female writer in Great Britain.

Spell-Bound was published as a paperback (which does much to account for its rarity) and contains ten supernatural stories "never before published," as the title page assures us, meaning they had not appeared in periodicals (further guaranteeing the obscurity of these texts). The stories explore domestic themes and settings: the insides (or intestines, if you will) of houses and familial relations, all located in that borderland where the Styx narrows to a fetid rivulet crossable in either direction. Like her more famous peers, Bird tended to aim for the uncanny rather than the gruesome, and her characters often find eventual redemption after traversing the borderland of some supernatural estrangement. But not always. One heroine, poisoning her grandfather to gain control of his estate so she can marry her lover, finds out at the grandfather's deathbed that her beloved is actually her brother. This fazes her not in the least, but, stymied in her plot, she poisons herself and promises to drag her grandfather down to hell with her so they can endlessly relive this scene. Even in stories that end in a major rather than a minor key, Bird inserts vivid elements of dissonance and menace. A cynical sexton robs his graves for jewelry, re-uses the same shrouds over and over, and breaks the coffins up into firewood for his stove. A neighbor, a reputed witch, is said to fly a vellum kite made from the skins of un-christened babies. A man visits the grave of his sister, whom he had shot to death after discovering that she was merely a re-animated corpse, and he finds putrid lymph still oozing from that gunshot wound. But if Bird is not exactly serving tea and crumpets, neither is she giving the reader raw heads and bloody bones. These heads are baked to a turn; and the bones are polished like heirloom silverware.

PLANNED CONTENTS:

· unabridged reprint of all ten stories in the original 1865 edition

· critical introduction





			Publishers of 19th and early 20th century literature with an emphasis on the fantastic, the speculative, the unusual, the occult and the eldritch.

		F O R T H C O M I N G T I T L E S
		Mary Ann Bird Spell-Bound Ghost stories of a forgotten Victorian The discovery of a collection of mid-Victorian ghost stories (dated 1865, but issued for Christmas 1864) that has gone unrecognized until now by genre bibliographers, scholars and collectors, is, we feel, a newsworthy event in itself. That the quality of the stories is not merely competent but above average makes this front page news. This is no mere curiosity item for the completist but a solid collection that deserves a place on the same shelf with the supernatural fiction of Rhoda Broughton, Mary Braddon, Amelia Edwards, and mistresses Riddell, Wood and Oliphant. The best stories here will find their way into future anthologies just as their author will find her way into that select sorority of Victorian women who helped build the foundation for the modern supernatural short story. In fact, leaving aside the ambiguously fictional collections of Mrs. Catherine Crowe (1948, 1850, 1859), Spell-Bound may very well have been the first collection of exclusively supernatural short stories written by a female writer in Great Britain. Spell-Bound was published as a paperback (which does much to account for its rarity) and contains ten supernatural stories "never before published," as the title page assures us, meaning they had not appeared in periodicals (further guaranteeing the obscurity of these texts). The stories explore domestic themes and settings: the insides (or intestines, if you will) of houses and familial relations, all located in that borderland where the Styx narrows to a fetid rivulet crossable in either direction. Like her more famous peers, Bird tended to aim for the uncanny rather than the gruesome, and her characters often find eventual redemption after traversing the borderland of some supernatural estrangement. But not always. One heroine, poisoning her grandfather to gain control of his estate so she can marry her lover, finds out at the grandfather's deathbed that her beloved is actually her brother. This fazes her not in the least, but, stymied in her plot, she poisons herself and promises to drag her grandfather down to hell with her so they can endlessly relive this scene. Even in stories that end in a major rather than a minor key, Bird inserts vivid elements of dissonance and menace. A cynical sexton robs his graves for jewelry, re-uses the same shrouds over and over, and breaks the coffins up into firewood for his stove. A neighbor, a reputed witch, is said to fly a vellum kite made from the skins of un-christened babies. A man visits the grave of his sister, whom he had shot to death after discovering that she was merely a re-animated corpse, and he finds putrid lymph still oozing from that gunshot wound. But if Bird is not exactly serving tea and crumpets, neither is she giving the reader raw heads and bloody bones. These heads are baked to a turn; and the bones are polished like heirloom silverware. PLANNED CONTENTS: · unabridged reprint of all ten stories in the original 1865 edition · critical introduction
	I Am the Man
	I Am the Man

N A V I G A T I O N
HOME IN PRINT Emma Frances Dawson AN ITINERANT HOUSE SUMMARY OF FORTHCOMING TITLES Bernard Capes LOST BAGGAGE H. Frankish DR. CUNLIFFE -- INVESTIGATOR Mary Ann Bird SPELL-BOUND Gerald Bullett ENCHANTMENT & DISENCHANTMENT “E. Thelmar” Illus. by Mahlon Blaine THE MANIAC Donald Armour SWEPT & GARNISHED Contact John Pinkney PO Box 15163 Portland, ME 04112 207-781-6080 pinkney@thomasloring.com Reserve your copy now. Contact us to reserve one or more copies of any forthcoming titles. No obligation and no advance payment necessary. Copyright Contents of this website © 2006 -- 2007 Robert T. Eldridge HOME