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Product Description
Gertrude Atherton was born in San Francisco in 1857, and died in 1948. She eloped at the age of nineteen, took up writing against her husband's wishes, and after his death became a protegee of Ambrose Bierce, whose influence can be seen here in those stories, The Dead and the Countess, Death and the Woman and The Striding Place, which have an overtly supernatural element. The Striding Place was rejected by one editor as 'far too gruesome', but was in Atherton's view 'the best short story I ever wrote'. Elsewhere, The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number, The Tragedy of a Snob, and A Monarch of a Small Survey the psychological takes precedence over the supernatural. And in The Bell in the Fog (reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw, and dedicated to Henry James) the supernatural and psychological combine to brilliant effect: an angelic child bears a striking resemblance to an old portrait. Is she a reincarnation of her ancestor? And will she turn out as unangelic in adulthood as that distant ancestor turned out before her?
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The great author had realised one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The great author had realised one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In my opinion this book contains three masterpieces of short, supernatural fiction- "The Bell in the Fog" "The Striding Place" and "The Countess and the Dead." The rest of the book is thin and unconvincing, but when three stories are this good, it's unfair to expect everything else to be up to that standard. Well worth a read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There was a time when Gertrude Atherton's name was mentioned together with Henry James and Edith Wharton, but that was for other work rather than for this slim collection of short stories which was originally published in 1905.
It could be said that Gertrude courted controversy throughout her writing and life, but alas in these stories that doesn't show. She was a protegee of Ambrose Bierce, but it will be for her other works that she wil be remembered. There are a couple of good stories here but the others are really so-so. This is a good read, but don't expect anything truly great.
It could be said that Gertrude courted controversy throughout her writing and life, but alas in these stories that doesn't show. She was a protegee of Ambrose Bierce, but it will be for her other works that she wil be remembered. There are a couple of good stories here but the others are really so-so. This is a good read, but don't expect anything truly great.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
i've bought quite a lot of wordsworth's tales of mystery and the supernatural.most have been good.this one is rubbish,badly written tedious stories of american society and manners of the late 19th century,with virtually no supernatural or mysterios content at all.thankfully it is a very short book.some authors are sadly forgotten or neglected today,gertrude atherton deserves to be one of them
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