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Gothic Romance in the Magazines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert D. Mayo
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Extract

The bibliographers of Gothic fiction have almost entirely overlooked the literature of the periodicals from 1770–1820, although they were one of the important channels of publication and afford many examples of the species. Montague Summers' so-called Gothic Bibliography, in most respects recklessly inclusive, lists only two romances from the Lady's Monthly Museum out of more than a dozen published there, and one from the Monthly Mirror, but otherwise ignores the numerous Gothic novels, novelettes, and short stories which figure in the magazines between The Romance of the Forest (1791) and Waverley (1814) -1 Jakob Brauchli lists 491 examples of English schauerromane published between 1764 and 1851—many of them known only by title— but takes no account whatsoever of periodical fiction.2 Yet the magazine literature of Gothicism is considerable, and in some respects distinctive; and much of it, although at present unknown, is more readily available in American libraries than the volumes issued by the Minerva Press. With research a hundred titles of Gothic novels and short stories could probably be added to Brauchli's 491, from the magazines alone. The great majority of these are unlisted anywhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , September 1950 , pp. 762 - 789
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 A Gothic Bibliography, The Fortune Press (London, 1940), pp. 255, 260, 490. Summers is also aware that Grasville Abbey (1797) had appeared in the magazines, and is acquainted with the redactions of the Marvellous Magazine and the Tell-Tale. But he is otherwise silent on this important area of literary activity from 1791–1814.

2 Der englische Schauerroman um 1800 (Weida i. Thiir., 1928).

3 Smollett's Launcelot Greaves was serialized in the British Magazine (1760–61). John Gait's Ayrshire Legatees appeared in Blackwood's, beginning in June, 1820.

4 Taking 1770 as a representative year, with 133 titles, 90 (or 68%) are news-sheets, as far as can be judged. For 1785 the proportion is 59% (106 news-sheets out of 180 serials); for 1800 it is 51% (134 out of 264).

5 For example, Astronomical Observations Made at the Royal Observatory (1750–1838), The London Medical Journal (1781–1800), Letters and Papers on Agriculture, Planting, etc. (1780–1868). Most philosophical, theological, political, and archeological journals may be disregarded as well.

6 The bound volumes typically contained an engraved title-page, an “Address to the Public”, and a full index to the year's offerings.

7 Taking the “Correct List of New Publications” of the Monthly Magazine, and judging by titles only, 25 out of 70 would be “Gothic” in 1796; 20 out of 49 in 1800; 20 out of 64 in 1805. The lists are incomplete, and the method of assigning books is arbitrary, but the proportions are roughly correct. Similar results may be obtained from the lists in the Edinburgh Review and the Literary Journal.

8 Ignoring, of course, the specialized magazines, like the Marvellous Magazine, devoted exclusively to abridgments of sensational fiction.

9 During 1793–96, for example, Walker's Hibernian Magazine, a Dublin miscellany, serialized an entire Gothic novel in translation, The Necromancer, or The Tale of the Black Forest, under the title of “A New German Story”—beginning even before the London edition was issued (1794). The first instalments were probably printed from the proof sheets of the London edition (the editor's ignorance of the real title is significant). The Hibernian Magazine was flagrantly piratical, and regularly pillaged all the most popular English magazines and many published novels.

10 These seem to be reprints of the entire novels (the whole series being unavailable)—a liberty which would probably not have been overlooked in a London miscellany. In 1778 the Lady's Magazine had published a short extract from the “Address to the Reader” of The Old English Baron, and promised to print later an extract from the “justly admired” work itself, but failed to do so, possibly owing to a protest from the author, who complained of this practice in The Progress of Romance. (Cf. The Lady's Magazine, rx, 282.) The Hibernian Magazine, which had pirated both the extract and the promise from the Lady's Magazine, naturally failed to make good likewise.

11 As in the Monthly Epitome (1797), where two extracts from The Italian accompany a summary of the plot, the whole totalling 4,300 words. A summary of The Mysteries of Udolpho in the Hibernian Magazine (1794) totalled 6,300 words.

12 In this manner the Analytical Review—to take one periodical alone—“reviewed” a great many Gothic romances, of which the following are representative (the figures are for the extracts, and do not include the accompanying comment or plot summary) : Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake, 1789 (800 words); Celestina, 1791 (3,200 words); The Old Manor House, 1793 (1,200 words); The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794 (1,400 words); The Italian, 1797 (1,700 words). This method of pirating was repeatedly complained of by authors during the century.

13 “The Abbey of Clunedale” was reprinted in the Universal Magazine (1801), the Edinburgh Magazine (1802), and the Britannic Magazine (1802); “Montmorency” in the Edinburgh Magazine (1799), and the Universal Magazine (1801); “Sir Egbert” and “Henry Fitzowen” in the Monthly Literary Recreations (1806–07).

14 No Prévost was recorded, nor any of the more sombre or macabre tales of D'Arnaud. A few of D'Arnaud's stories of suffering and persecuted love enjoyed some currency. The London Magazine offered “The History of Rosetta” in 1773; the Universal Magazine printed an abridged version of “Salisbury” in the following year, and later “Julia, or the Penitent Daughter” (1782), “The Lord of Crequi” (1782), “The New Clementina” (1783), and “The Prince of Brittany” (1785); and several of these were carried over into Walker's Hibernian Magazine. These stories undoubtedly helped to water the crop of ultra-senti-

15 Graham Pollard cites a third such magazine, Radcliffe's New Novelists Pocket Magazine (1802), but this serial is not available in this country; cf. New Paths in Book Collecting, ed. John Carter (London: Constable, 1934), p. 257.

16 The Monk was endlessly plundered by the redactors (cf. Summers, op. cit., pp. 422423). A late example in the miscellanies is “Wildenhem Castle, or The Murdered Nun, a German Romance”, in the Marvellous Magazine, or Entertaining Miscellany (Dublin, 1822). In this novelette, the “History of Don Raymond” from The Monk is cut down from 30,000 to 13,000 words, and the proper names are all disguised.

17 “The Recess, a Tale of Past Time, Originally Written by Miss Lee”, The Marvellous Magazine, I (July, 1802), 1–72; and “Koenigsmark the Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia … by H. J. Sarrett”, ibid., iii (June, 1803), 1–80. There were also five shorter pieces published in 1802, one attributed to Meissner. Fourteen of the eighteen romances were tailored to precisely seventy-two pages; three to thirty-six—indicating the mechanical nature of the process.

18 For example, among the chapbooks : The Gothic Story of Courville Castle, or The Illegitimate Son (London: T. Hurst, 1801), “From the Lady's Magazine” at head of text; Sir Bertrand, Sir Gawen, Edwin (Poughnill: G. Nicholson, 1801). In the latter, “Sir Gawen” (p. 23) is attributed to the Speculator, “Edwin” (p. 27) to the Universal Magazine. “Sir Bertrand” was widely pirated by the chapbooks.

19 In 1793 the editor of the Bon Ton Magazine (in, 2) thus addressed his “Correspondents”: “We would most willingly comply with the request of Timothy Tartlett, and give an extract from the Confessions of Lady Strathmore, just published; but the copy of it has been procured at a vast expense, and it would be injustice, as yet, to deprive the proprietor of his just emoluments. However, as we are wholly devoted to the wishes of our readers, we hereby undertake not to forget the request.”

20 Cf. the address “To the Fair Patronesses of the Lady's Monthly Museum”: “To obtain Public Approbation … neither Expense nor Labour have been spared … our chief contributors are Ladies of established Reputation in the Literary Circles … But while we do justice to the virtues and talents of our principal Writers, let us not withhold our gratitude from those occasional Correspondents, to whom we are under considerable obligations.” Lady's Monthly Museum, i (1798), i-ii.

21 In May, 1778, the editor announces “more favours from our correspondents than we can either insert or specify.” In October, 1784, he writes: “… we are not the parents, but the nurses of these compositions; our Patronesses are the Authors, we are only the Editors.” In 1809: “To our Correspondents who have so liberally contributed their ingenious compositions, and by whose assistance we have been enabled to render our Miscellany original, interesting, and amusing, the sincerest and most grateful acknowledgments are certainly due” (Lady's Magazine, XL, ii). The editor made it a point in every volume to thank his amateur scribblers.

22 Cf. W. C. Sydney, England and the English in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1892), ii, 137. In comparison, the total sale of Waverley (1814), a sensational popular success, amounted to 11,000 copies in the first fifteen years after publication. In 1805 the Lady's Monthly Museum estimated the number of its “Fair Readers” at 50,000, allowing for several readers to each copy (xv, ii).

23 A story will be termed Gothic if it includes one or more scenes of terror in the conventional mode—employing, that is, the traditional apparatus of gloomy castles, dark forests, storms, banditti, monkish villainy, etc. Not everything in stories thus labelled, of course, is concerned with the appeal to fear, nor is this necessarily the dominant interest; but it is always a prominent feature.

24 Mehrotra lists more that eighty “romantic” novels between 1786–91, many of which incorporated “Gothic” features—Horace Walpole and the English Novel (Oxford, 1934), pp. 175–179.

25 The U niversal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (London), LXXV (Aug., 1784), 74–77; reprinted in Walker's Hibernian Magazine (Oct., 1784), pp. 583–585.

26 Namely, that “Providence can draw good from the depths of vice; for [Manfredi's] lust hath rent the evil of Dissimulation, and [his] revenge stopped the abuse of authority.” The title of the story, as well as Manfredi's name and rôle, betrays the influence of Otranto.

27 The Gothic tales and fragments of the miscellanies I have already described in some detail elsewhere; cf. “The Gothic Short Story of the Magazines”, MLR, xxxvii (1942), 448–454. The present essay seeks to develop their larger relations to Gothic romance in the magazines.

Further examples of Gothic tales which do not find mention in the above article, or in the present, are as follows (only the first observed appearance of each story is listed, although some of them were widely reprinted) : “Fitzcarey, or The Recluse of Selwood”, The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, LXXXVIII (1791); “Oswald and Egbertha”, The General Magazine and Impartial Review, vi (1792); “Orasmin, or The Folly of Despondency”, The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, xci (1792); “A Journey to London”, The Edinburgh Magazine, n.s. vi (1795); “Fitzalan” (2 parts), The Monthly Visitor, II (1797); “The Two Monks”, The Lady's Monthly Museum, I (1798); “Macleod of Dunve-gan, a Scottish Trait”, ibid.; “The Raven's Tower, a Traditionary Tale”, The Monthly Mirror, vn (1799); “Edric and Eleanor” (2 parts), Britannic Magazine, vi (1799); “Sir Oswald Peircy”, The Lady's Monlldy Museum, xv (1805); “Ferdinand de Guimaraens, a Portugese Tale of the Thirteenth Century”, La Belle Assemblée, i (1806); “Rodriguez and Isabella, or The Terrors of Conscience, a Tale”, The Lady's Magazine, xxxrx (1808); “Lauren-stein Castle, or The Ghost of the Nun”, La Belle Assemblée, vi (1809); “Vivaldi, a Romance”, The Lady's Monthly Museum, n.s. xv (1813); “Lorenzo, or The Robber”, ibid., S.3.IU (1816); “Unsuccessful Machinations, or The Castle of Dunanachy” (2 parts), La Belle Assemblée, n.s.xv (1817); “The Novice of San Martino”, The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature, ii (1818); “The Veiled Heiress of Lomond, a Tale” (2 parts), The Theatrical Inquisitor, xiii (1818); “The Castle-Goblin, or The Tower of Neuf tchaberg”, The Weekly Entertainer, n.s.i (1820).

After 1820 the old tradition of the Gothic Tale is continued in such stories as “The Fair Iselle, or The Phantom of the Castle of Valfin” (1824), “A Highland Legend” (1825), and “The Italian Travellers” (1830) in The Ladies' Pocket Magazine; and “Alberto” (1826) and “The Elopement” (1826) in The Pocket Magazine.

28 The Speculator (London), I (1790), 119–148. First published in 1790, “Sir Gawen” was reprinted in the Edinburgh Magazine in the same year, and (under the title “An Interesting Story”) in the Bon Ton Magazine in 1791. Revised considerably by the author, it reappeared in the volumes of Drake's Literary Hours (1798,1800, 1804) as “Henry Fitzowen, a Gothic Tale”, and was republished in this form in the Monthly Literary Recreations in 1806, and no doubt elsewhere. A late reappearance of “Sir Gawen” in the miscellanies is in the Theatrical Inquisitor (1819). Drake's were the most distinguished imitations of “Sir Bertrand.”

29 This is not, of course, a hard and fast distinction. There was naturally some crossing of Unes. Some fragments, like “Sir Edwin”, The Lady's Monthly Museum, v (1800), and “Sir Edmund”, ibid., n.s.xvi (1814), do not go beyond simple material causation; and some tales follow the more liberal examples of The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron, as do “A Gothic Story”, The General Magazine, I (1787), and “Fitzalan”, The Monthly Visitor, ii (1797). But these are the exceptions, not the rule, and in 1809 the editor of La Belle Assemblée felt it necessary to write of “Laurenstein Castle, or The Ghost of the Nun”, as follows: “The following story introduces a ghost as a spirit of actual existence, and as such may perhaps offend the taste of the enlightened reader; but as a German legend, and a narrative of popular superstition abroad, it may not be unentertaining” (vi, 15).

30 Further examples of Gothic fragments not mentioned in the above article (cf. footnote 27) or elsewhere in the present are as follows (the first observed appearance only being cited): “Tancred, a Fragment”, The New Lady's Magazine, vi (1791); “The Spectre, a Fragment, by S. Pure”, ibid.; “The Two Knights”, The Pocket Magazine, or Elegant Repository of Useful and Polite Literature, iii (1795); “Sir Edmund, a Gothic Fragment”, The European Magazine, xxix (1796); “A Fragment, in the Manner of Old Romances, by M. Hays”, The Lady's Monthly Museum, ix (1802); “Sir Alan, a Fragment in the Modern Taste”, The Weekly Entertainer, XLV (1805); “The Ruin of the Rock, a Fragment”, The Lady's Monthly Museum, n.s.II (1807); “Mrs. Barbauld's Sir Bertrand, Not an Original”, The New British Lady's Magazine, n.s.i (1817); “The White Woman of Berlin, a Fragment”, The Theatrical Inquisitor, xv (1819); “The Black Goat of Brandenburgh, a Fragment”, ibid.; “Amelia of Rheinsberg”, The New Hibernian Magazine (Dublin), II (1821).

31 There are no precise limits for either the novelette or the novel in the magazines. In this essay, for convenience, any story of three to six instalments (or roughly 5,000 to 12,000 words) will ordinarily be termed a novelette. The term was in contemporary use in this sense; cf. The Lady's Monthly Museum, n.s.xrv (1813), 375.

32 The General Magazine and Impartial Review (London), n (1788), 365–372, 429–431. Strictly speaking, “The Friar's Tale” was not first published in the magazines, but in a volume by Anna Seward entitled Variety: A Collection of Essays, Written in the Year 1787 (London, 1788), whence it was reprinted by the General Magazine. But as explained in the volume, it was written for publication in a periodical, and was widely reprinted—namely, in the Hibernian Magazine (1788), the Lady's Magazine (1792), and the Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (Dublin, 1792), and (in redacted form) as “Albert and Matilda” in the Universal Magazine (1789), the Hibernian Magazine (1789), and the Britannic Magazine (1799). It was originally intended to have three instalments, and was usually so printed.

33 “At the request of several of our readers, this much-admired romance is now reprinted in volumes, for G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster Row” (The Lady's Magazine, xxviii, 356). Reviewing the novel in the Monthly Mirror (m, 346), one writer said: “This novel first appeared in the Lady's Magazine, a medium surely ill-calculated for a work of any length …” The reviewer in the Monthly Visitor (n, 382) wrote: “This romance was originally retailed in the Lady's Magazine, and is now published in a detached form, and, apparently, without the corrections of the author, whose first flight it appears to be.”

Grasville Abbey was translated into both German and French. The Paris edition carried Mrs. Radcliffe's name on the title page, and was widely attributed to her. This is not surprising, since the author had borrowed considerably from A Sicilian Romance and The Romance of the Forest.

34 Picking up the thread of the narrative, after three and a half years, “Chapter Iv” of the narrative begins: “Rudolpho still continued galloping furiously onwards at a hazard, through brakes and over bushes” (The Lady's Magazine, xxIx, 155).

35 The writer has been attentive to the formal divisions. Forced to interrupt the interpolated “History of Fernando de Courville”, she writes: “Alphonso gave a scream of horror; the paper dropt from his hands, a mist gathered before his eyes. …” And then resum-

36 Cf. the memoranda to “Correspondents”: “A continuation is requested of Madeline, or the Castle of St. Bernardine” (The Lady's Magazine, xxxi [1800], p. 2). “We shall be obligated to Periclitator for a farther continuation of Duncannon Castle, which will better enable us to form a judgment of its merit” (ibid., p. 346). “Manilo-Castle, by Periclitator, is received” (ibid., p. 570). “The Castle of Eridan has been received—the author has our thanks” (ibid., XXXII [1801], 58). None of these Gothic romances ever appeared.

37 The Lady's Magazine, xxxv (1804), 87.

38 Examples of the long Gothic romance in other magazines are: “The Heiress of Devon” (4 long parts), The Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (Dublin), ii-III (1793); “The Banditti of the Forest, or The Mysterious Dagger” (8 parts), The Lady's Monthly Museum, n.s.xi-XII (1811–12); “The Stranger Knight” (8 parts), The Theatrical Inquisitor, i-v (1812–14); “The Bond of Blood” (6 parts, incomplete), ibid., vi-vii (1815); “The Child of the Battle” (27 parts), The Lady's Monthly Museum, s.3.i-vi (1815–17); “The Recluse” (8 parts), The Weekly Entertainer, n.s.iii (1821).

39 According to Brauchli's lists, better than 90% of the Gothic romances printed in book form 1791–1818 were of more than single-volume length.

40 The Lady's Monthly Museum, i (1798), 85–93, 179–185, 263–274, 363–372.

41 The Italian is roughly 150,000 words; “Schabraco”, 11,000.

42 The Gothic novelettes of the Lady's Monthly Museum are as follows: “The Maid of St. Marino, an Historical Legend” (5 parts), “Schabraco, a Romance” (4 parts), “T,he Knight of St. John of Jerusalem” (4 parts), Vol. I (1798); “The Ruins of St. Oswald, a Romance” (6 parts), IV (1800); “The Castle De Warrenne, a Romance” (6 parts), v (1800); “Frederica, a Romance” (6 parts), vII (1801); “De Valcour and Bertha, or The Prediction Fulfilled, a Romance” (6 parts), x (1803); “The Cave of St. Sidwell, a Romance” (6 parts), n.s.II-III (1807); “The Shield and Spectacles, an Allegorical Romance” (4 parts), n.s.v (1808); “The Baron's Wedding” (4 parts), n.s.vi (1809); “The Child of Suspicion, a Romantic Tale” (5 parts), n.s.xi-xii (1811–12).

Examples of Gothic novelettes in other miscellanies than the Lady's Magazine (already cited) and the Lady's Monthly Museum are: “Albert” (6 parts), The General Magazine and Impartial Review, v-vi (1791–92); “The British Barons, by Thomas Bellamy” (8 short parts), ibid., vi (1792); “The Nun” (2 long parts), The European Magazine, xxv (1794); “The Old English Castle, an Ancient Story, by Simonides” (4 parts), The New Lady's Magazine, ix (1794); “The Horrors of a Monastery, a Tale, by a Young Gentleman of Edinburgh” (2 long parts), The Edinburgh Magazine, n.s.vi (1795); “Johanna and Ubaldus, a Tale of the Fourteenth Century” (8 short parts), The Bon Ton Magazine, v (1795–96); “Caroline Courtney” (4 parts), The Monthly Mirror, I (1795–96); “Retribution, a Tale” (3 parts), ibid., II (1796).

Late survivals of Gothic novelettes are: “Bernstorf, a Tale, by J. W. Dalby” (4 parts), The Pocket Magazine, xi (1823); “The Mysterious Monk, or The Mountain Rose” (3 parts), The Ladies Pocket Magazine, v (1826); “The Terrible Warning, or Blood Will Have Blood, a Romance by Ann of Kent (5 parts), ibid., x (1829); ”The Priory“ (5 parts), ibid., xIv (1830); ”Roderick, or The Magic Tower, a Tale of Former Times, by Mrs. Ann Rolfe“ (2 long parts), ibid., XVII (1832); ”The Old Sign Board, or ‘House in the Wilderness,‘ by Miss M. L. Beevor“ (2 long parts), ibid., xvn (1832).

43 The expressed moral of “The Monks and the Robbers” is : “As the dust is to the mountain, so is all that the storms of life can take from virtue to the sum of good which the Omnipotent has appointed for its reward”—The Lady's Magazine, xxxvi (1805), 264. That of “De Courville Castle” is: “Though education in a great measure stamps the man, virtue is within the reach of all; and, although the path may be rugged, the reward is sure”—ibid., xxvIII (1797), 165. That of “Grasville Abbey”: “that virtue and vice are their own rewards”—ibid., xxvii (1797), 353.