Vernon Lee

Broschiertes Buch

Hauntings ; (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

Beschreibung

The Past is not dead. It is waiting to possess you. "The greatest... of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction."--Montague Summers In this landmark collection of Victorian supernatural fiction, the acclaimed intellectual and writer Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) redefined the ghost story, moving it from creaking corridors to the dangerous realms of the human mind. Her tales are not merely of spectres, but of the magnetic, malignant power of history, art, and obsession. Across four mesmerising stories, Hauntings explores how the passions and wickedness of the past return to contaminate the present: Amore Dure: A historian researching a 16th-century Italian noblewoman, infamous for the ruin and death of her many lovers, finds his obsession escalating until he fears he will become her next victim. Dionea: The arrival of a mysterious girl washed ashore in a remote Italian village unleashes a wave of violent, chaotic desire, suggesting she may be a pagan goddess reborn. Oke of Okehurst: A wife's pathological obsession with her ancestral past (a notorious murder of a lover) drives her husband to distraction and madness, as he battles a phantom rival for her soul. A Wicked Voice: A composer in Venice is drawn into the fatal legend of an 18th-century castrato whose singing was said to be so exquisite it could literally kill, raising the question of whether a voice can truly haunt the living. Lee's ghosts are not caught in chains, but in the deepest recesses of the mind. She offers a brilliant, chilling study of aesthetics, female agency, and the terrifying line where artistic obsession ends and psychological collapse begins.

Autor

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget (1856 - 1935). She is remembered today primarily for her supernatural fiction and her work on aesthetics. An early follower of Walter Pater, she wrote over a dozen volumes of essays on art, music and travel. The English writer and translator Montague Summers described Vernon Lee as "the greatest [...] of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction." E. F. Bleiler has claimed that "Lee's stories are really in a category by themselves. Intelligent, amusingly ironic, imaginative, original, they deserve more than the passing attention that they have attracted". Neil Barron described the contents of Lee's collection Hauntings thus "The stories are powerful and very striking, among the finest of their kind."

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Fantasy and Horror Classics
• Seitenzahl: 184
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Mai 2008
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 11mm
• Gewicht: 240g
• ISBN-13: 9781409720355
• ISBN-10: 1409720357
• Artikelnr.: 23904312