Northanger Horrid Novels – Did They Actually Exist?

I have written about these books previously, but at a recent event, I was again asked if Austen made up the names of the books in Northanger Abbey. So, I will again  introduce our visitors to what are known as the Northanger Horrid Novels, seven early Gothic examples of fiction.

These books were among the many published by Minerva Press in the late 1700s and early 1800s. William Lane established Minerva Press at No. 33 Leadenhall Street, London, when he moved his circulating library there in 1790. The seven books, which comprise the Northanger Horrid Novels, were once thought to be creations of Jane Austen’s imagination, but research in the early 1900s by Michael Sadleir and Montague Summers proved the stories did exist. In Northanger Abbey, Isabella Thorpe tells Catherine Morland …

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/northanger-abbey/images/14651557/title/northanger-abbey-photo

“Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read The Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”

“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! – What are they all?”

“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocket-book. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warning, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”

“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”

“Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them.”

There is more than just a bit of “history” in just mentioning this list. The first two of which Isabella speaks were written in the height of the Reign of Terror in France. [The Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.] The popularity of Gothic novels “began with Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Romance of the Forest (1792) and entered its second, still more popular phase in 1794, with the publication of Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. The second group of texts on Isabella’s list were published in the same year as Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, the text that established the most important alternative to Radcliffe’s gothic. Given that Northanger Abbey was in large part written in 1798, one might suggest that the last group of texts signals for Austen the genre’s contemporaneity and its still rapidly increasing popularity.” [Adam Matthew Publications: “Gothic Fiction” by Peter Otto]There is even a scene in the movie Becoming Jane where Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) meets Mrs. Radcliffe (Helen McCrory).

Mrs. Radcliffe : Of what do you wish to write?

Jane Austen : Of the heart.

Mrs. Radcliffe : Do you know it?

Jane Austen : Not all of it.

Mrs. Radcliffe : In time, you will. But even if that fails, that’s what the imagination is for.

Otto continues on to tell us, “The vexed question of the relation between (popular) literature and history, fantasy and actuality, is implied in the subtitles of Isabella’s ‘horrid novels’: ‘A Tale’, ‘A Story’, ‘A Romance’; ‘a German tale’, a ‘tale … Founded on facts’, and ‘a German story, founded on incidents in real life’. This is, as I have suggested, one of the key concerns of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, evident in chapter fourteen for example, in the ambiguity which allows Eleanor Tilney to believe that her friend, Catherine Moreland, is speaking of social rather than literary revolution:

“I have heard that something very shocking indeed, will soon come out in London.”

Miss Tilney, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was startled, and hastily replied, “Indeed! – and of what nature?”

“That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more horrible than any thing we have met with yet.”

“Good heaven! – Where could you hear of such a thing?”

“A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly dreadful. I shall expect murder and every thing of the kind”.

“The ‘proper’ relation between fiction and reality is on this occasion introduced by Henry Tilney who, speaking with a more than mildly paternal tone, offers to ‘make’ Eleanor and Catherine ‘understand each other’. In this context, it is important to note that four of the novels on Isabella’s list are by women, and that female authors account for four of the five titles written in England. At the same time, all but one of the ‘horrid novels’ were published by William Lane’s Minerva Press.”

Some years back, Valancourt Books began a project to bring these titles and many others from around the world to the reading public. Along with those found on Valancourt, most of the titles are available from online book sources. Some are even available in their entirety at internet reading sites. So, what are the stories in each of these books? And would Jane Austen have read them?

The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793 )by Eliza Parsons ~ Jane Austen names The Castle of Wolfenbach in her novel Northanger Abbey to portray the Gothic novel as forming around a society of its own, giving evidence of readership and cross-class and cross-gender interest in the Gothic novel. It contains the standard gothic tropes of the blameless damsel in distress, the centrality of a huge, gloomy, ancient building to the plot, the discovery of scandalous family secrets, and a final confrontation between forces of good and evil. Its resolutely anti-Catholic, pro–English Protestant sentiment is also a feature of the genre.

Plot: A lecherous and incestuous uncle forces Matilda Weimar to flee her home and to seek refuge in the ancient Castle of Wolfenbach. Horrifying mysteries also dwell in the castle, including that of the missing Countess of Wolfenbach. Matilda must unravel the clues before her uncle tracks her down and takes her away with him.

The Mysterious Warning (1796) by Eliza Parsons ~ Subtitled “a German Tale,” it was first published in London by the sensationalist Minerva Press and contains many familiar Gothic tropes, including dark family secrets, incest, seduction, and ghostly apparitions.

Plot: When the much revered Count Renaud dies, his degenerate heir, Rhodophil, assumes his father’s title. The count has disowned his son Ferdinand, who has married without his father’s permission. Rhodophil swears he will share his riches with Ferdinand and the younger brother’s wife, Claudina, but a “mysterious warning” from the grave sends Ferdinand fleeing for his life. To make matters worse, Claudina has aligned herself with Rhodophil. Ferdinand’s quest for his own fortune and adventure brings him to the doorstep of a recluse, who has a horrible secret. Later, he becomes imprisoned by the Turkish army and then encounters one of Gothic literature’s most depraved female characters, Fatima. If he survives all his meanderings, Ferdinand must then return to Renaud Castle to uncover the ghostly truth about his wife and his brother.

Clermont (1798) by Regina Maria Roche ~ “…is arguably the definitive text of the Gothic novel craze during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”. [Kröger, Lisa (2013). “Haunted Narratives”. In Kröger, Lisa; Anderson, Melanie (eds.). The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 3.]

Plot: Madeline lives in seclusion with her father Clermont, who holds a mysterious past. That seclusion is interrupted by one of Clermont’s former friends, a Countess. Madeline is allowed to reside with the Countess, with whom she will receive an education. However, the Countess is attacked by unknown assailants, and Madeline is assaulted in a ghostly crypt. Compounding their problems, a sinister stranger appears to claim Madeline as his bride. The stranger knows Clermont’s secret and threatens to ruin Madeline’s father. Madeline must avoid her pursuers, solve the mystery of her father’s past, and win the love of De Sevignie.

The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath ~ Subtitled “A Romance” it was published in four volumes by the sensationalist Minerva Press in 1798. It was part of a brief but popular vogue of German tales, a fashion criticized in the Critical Review of June 1807: “So great is the rage for German tales, and German novels, that a cargo is no sooner imported than the booksellers’ shops are filled with a multitude of translators, who seize with avidity and without discrimination, whatever they can lay their hands upon…[these novels are] trash…[and] worthless objects.” Although most Gothic novels took a resolutely anti-Roman Catholic stance, the author of this novel was herself a Catholic.

Sleath is very much an Ann Radcliffe wannabe, and she models many of her pieces on Radcliffe’s works, using several of Radcliffe’s signature plot devices: mysterious monks, ruined towers, assumed names for the characters, last-minute rescues, and death-bed scenes. In this novel, Julie de Rubine discovers that her marriage to the Marchese de Montferrat is a sham. Unfortunately, this news is not delivered until after Julie gives birth. Julie takes her child and an orphan by the name of Laurette to live in a half-ruined castle on the Rhine. She remains there under the Marchese’s threats until Laurette becomes old enough to “stir the passion” of other key characters. Then things get very interesting!

The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by Karl Friedrich Kahlert under the alias Lawrence Flammenberg and translated by Peter Teuthold. Originally said to have been “Translated from the German of Lawrence Flammenberg by Peter Teuthold,” a number of its readers, including scholarly readers, assumed this to be a way of adding to the authenticity of a Gothic text by claiming a German genealogy, a common British publishing practice in its day. However, this novel was originally written in German by Karl Friedrich Kahlert and then translated by Peter Teuthold. [Frank, Frederick S. (1997). “Gothic Gold: The Sadleir-Black Gothic Collection”. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. 26: 287–312.]

This book is a series of interconnected stories, each of which deals with the enigmatic character Volkert the Necromancer. This is a very strange novel. It is filled with murder, dark magic, and plenty of ghosts. The plot takes too many twists and turns to describe in so short of a space, but for the true Gothic fan, it is a must.

The Midnight Bell: A German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life ( 1798) by Francis Lathom ~ It was first published anonymously in 1798 and has, on occasion, been wrongly attributed to George Walker.

Plot: Alphonsus Cohenburg finds his mother covered in blood. She tells him that his uncle has murdered Alphonsus’s father, and he must flee for his life. He is never to return to Cohenburg castle. Alphonsus’s adventures include being a soldier, a miner, and a church sacristan. He meets and weds Lauretta, but she is kidnapped by a group of ruffians. Alphonsus must solve the mystery of his wife’s disappearance and the question of his mother’s strange pronouncement. Add to those dilemmas the news of ghosts haunting his family’s castle and the sound of great bell each night at midnight, and one has a complete Gothic delight.

The Horrid Mysteries: A Story from the German of the Marquis of Grosse (a translation of the German Gothic novel Der Genius) (1796)

It was first published by the sensationalist Minerva Press in 1796. A later, two-volume edition published by Robert Holden and Co., Ltd. in 1927 includes a new introductory essay by Montague Summers. The books were bound in pictoral boards, and feature a period-style “advertisement” for Pears’ Soap on the rear cover.

Plot: The hero of the tale, the Marquis of Grosse, finds himself embroiled in a secret revolutionary society which advocates murder and mayhem in pursuit of an early form of communism. He creates a rival society to combat them and finds himself hopelessly trapped between the two antagonistic forces. The book has been both praised and lambasted for its lurid portrayal of sex, violence and barbarism. H. P. Lovecraft, in his lengthy essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, dismissed it and others like it as “…the dreary plethora of trash like Marquis von Grosse’s Horrid Mysteries…”(Wikipedia)