The Darker Sex
Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre by Victorian Women Writers
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Ghosts, precognition, suicide, and the afterlife are all themes in these thrilling stories by Britain and America's greatest Victorian women, proving their talent for creating dark, sensational, and horrifying tales of the supernatural. This anthology showcases some of the best and most representative work by female writers during this period, including Emily Bronte, Mary Braddon, George Eliot, and Edith Nesbit, as well as Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Riddell, Louisa Baldwin, Mary Penn, Violet Quirk, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Editor Mike Ashley provides valuable insight into the authors' lives. Each story still has the ability to shock, frighten, and show how Victorian women perfected and developed the Gothic genre.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prolific editor Ashley (The Mammoth Book of Fantasy) does his usual fine job in selecting and introducing the 11 entries in a reprint anthology sure to appeal to fans of both Victorian fiction and ghost stories. Well-known mainstream writers of the day include Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Emily Bront (represented by a brief allegorical tale, "The Palace of Death"). Children's author Edith Nesbit shows a deft hand for horror in the science-fictional "The Third Drug," in which a man flees thugs in Paris only to end up in the clutches of a mad scientist. One of the best stories and the longest is Charlotte Ridell's "Nut Bush Farm," in which a new farm tenant tries to uncover the truth about his vanished predecessor. Also notable is Mary Wilkins Freeman's "Luella Miller," in which a woman's unreasonable demands on her servants appear to have fatal consequences.
