Looking for some Halloween reading suggestions? We bring you a grim and grisly new addition to the Victorian Collection: the 1847 anonymous Gothic novel The Mysterious Avenger. Issued by a Yorkshire publisher, this cheaply produced “penny dreadful” features everything a reader might expect in a modern horror thriller. Spooky locales? Sinister characters? The supernatural? Revenge? …
Part VII: Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) This week marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Irish novelist Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu is best remembered for his ghost stories and gothic tales and for his famous literary relation, playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (who was his great-uncle). Le Fanu launched his writing career with several …
The HBLL is hosting a blood drive in the WSC on Tuesday afternoon, and Special Collections was asked to bring some vampire books to entertain the donors! We’ll be featuring a first edition of Twilight from our Mormon Literary Authors collection and a signed first edition of Dracula from our Victorian Collection. If you really …
Special Collections’ dim-lit stacks hold rare copies of some of the most famous tales of horror, mystery, and otherworldly terror! I thought I’d highlight a few in the spirit of Halloween: 1. Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the wanderer: a tale (second edition, 1821). This famous Gothic novel, by the great-uncle of Oscar Wilde, tells the …