A Review of Tales of Wonder - Tales of Terror

 

Stephen Mariconda reviewed the first volume of my Tales of Terror project:

... Tales of Terror is a continuation of a project begun at the end of the eighteenth century by Matthew Gregory Lewis with Tales of Wonder (1801). The latter anthology, edited by the notorious author of The Monk (1796), proved to be a milestone of Romantic poetry and a bellwether of the Gothic. Lewis did yeoman’s work in collecting a wide range of horror ballads, including original and traditional works, adaptations, translations, and even parodies of the Gothic. Sir Walter Scott and Robert Southey contributed supernatural verses, and many important contemporaries, including Shelley (and therefore his successors) fell strongly under its influence. ...

In 2012, Brett Rutherford's own edition of Tales of Wonder (also from Poet’s Press) offered reliable texts of the poems, added extensive annotations, and documented the provenance (e.g., folklore) of Lewis’s selections. Popular balladry, with its strong basis in local legends, was the emphasis of the first volume; and this collection takes up the thread of that tradition. As such, the material in Tales of Wonder and Tales of Terror represents the antecedent of modern supernatural fiction. ...

... There are few more qualified to undertake such an effort as this: Rutherford is a distinguished neo-Romantic poet and scholar whose areas of specialty include Gothic, the supernatural, and classical mythology. … The book is well designed, and an excellent bibliography is provided. lt is to be followed shortly by Tales of Terror: The Supernatural Poem Since 1800, Volume Two, thus completing the venture begun by "Monk" Lewis in 1797. lt will be a boon to both readers and critics to have a complete chronological record of supernatural poetry with uniform layout and editorial concept. There can be no real study of a genre such as supernatural fiction until accurate texts and representative works are easily accessible to scholars for detailed analysis and study; and this effort will undoubtedly supply the needed platform for such work, in addition to providing an entertaining and engrossing read for long after midnight.   — Stephen Mariconda, Spectral Realms #4, Winter 2016.