ACCREDITED GHOST STORIES. Collected by T. M. Jarvis, Esq. London: Printed for J. Andrews, New Bond Street, 1823. 12mo, pp. [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-235 [236: blank], mid nineteenth-century three-quarter black polished calf and marbled boards, spine panel tooled and ruled in gold and blind, brown leather title piece. First edition, first printing. A collection of credulous ghost stories based on UK legends and folklore, an early forerunner of similar compilations of "true" ghost stories by Catherine Crowe and Elliott O'Donnell. "When Horace Walpole used all the apparatus of Gothic fantasy in THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO (1765) he created a literary vehicle for ghosts without establishing the ghost story; the spectres were merely a stage effect. But they now became the stock-in-trade of the Gothic school of writing. In these novels a haunted edifice was an inevitable centerpiece. In most cases the hauntings were contrived by human agency or the ghost had a walk-on part in order to provoke the action; in much fewer cases were the ghosts genuinely supernatural, with a more significant role. Most of these books were formulaic and repetitive, but a few are worthy of note ... Although the better Gothics also utilized ghosts, these were usually rationalized. The use of sheeted spectres, wailing phantoms, rattling chains and gibbering skeletons reduced the supernatural element to burlesque, and the Gothic ghost story was soon parodied in such works as NIGHTMARE ABBEY (1818) by Thomas Love Peacock and NORTHANGER ABBEY (1818) by Jane Austen. Rudolph Ackermann published GHOST-STORIES; COLLECTED WITH A PARTICULAR VIEW TO COUNTERACT THE VULGAR BELIEF IN GHOSTS AND APPARITIONS ... (1823) in an effort to counter the excesses of the Gothic story ... In the UK the ghost story was as much influenced by folk tales and legend as by the Gothic romance. A number of ghost stories were collected in the same manner as the Grimm Brothers compiled their folk tales, and presented in narrative form. The main folklorists reporting these tales included James Hogg in WINTER EVENING TALES (1820) and THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR (1828), the brothers John and Michael Banim in REVELATIONS OF THE DEAD-ALIVE (1824) and T. Crofton Croker in FAIRY LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS OF THE SOUTH OF IRELAND (1825). Their stories take the form of reportage of folk legends, but became increasingly humanized. The best-remembered collector of ghost stories was Catherine Crowe, with her highly influential THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE (1848), LIGHT AND DARKNESS (1850) and GHOSTS AND FAMILY LEGENDS (1858). These set the trend for 'real' ghost stories related in fictional narrative form, an approach that became very popular in the 1890s ..." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 403. 1843 gift inscription on the front paste-down. Rebound without the four pages of advertisements bound at the rear. Calf worn, especially along outer joints, but a sound, very good copy. (#179017).
Price: $250.00
No statement of printing.