"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" Published 1845

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is a comedic short story written by American author Edgar Allan Poe.

Plot summary

The story follows an unnamed narrator who visits a mental institution in southern France (more accurately, a "Maison de Santé") known for a revolutionary new method of treating mental illnesses called the "system of soothing." A companion with whom he is travelling knows Monsieur Maillard, the originator of the system, and makes introductions before leaving the narrator. The narrator is shocked to learn that the "system of soothing" has been abandoned recently. He questions this, as he has heard of its success and popularity. Maillard tells him to "believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

The narrator tours the grounds of the hospital and is invited to dinner. There, he is joined by twenty-five to thirty other people and a large, lavish spread of food. The other guests, he notices, are dressed somewhat oddly; though their clothes are well-made, they do not seem to fit the people very well. Most of them are female and were "bedecked with a profusion of jewelry, such as rings, bracelets and ear-rings, and wore their bosoms and arms shamefully bare." The table and the room were decorated with an excess of lit candles wherever it was possible to find a place for them. Dinner is also accompanied by musicians, playing "fiddles, fifes, trombones, and a drum" and, though they seem to entertain all others present, the narrator likens it to horrible noises. Upon the whole, the narrator says, there was much of the "bizarre" about everything at the dinner.

Conversation as they eat focuses on the patients that they have been treating. They demonstrate for the narrator the strange behavior they have witnessed, including patients who thought themselves a teapot, a donkey, cheese, champagne, a frog, snuff, a pumpkin, and others. Maillard occasionally tries to calm them down, and the narrator seems very concerned by their behavior and passionate imitations.

He then learns that this staff has replaced the system of soothing with a much more strict system, which Maillard says is based on the work of a "Doctor Tarr" and a "Professor Fether." The narrator says he is not familiar with their work, to the astonishment of the others. It is finally explained at this point why the previous system was abandoned. One "singular" incident, Maillard says, was when the patients, granted a large amount of liberty around the house, actually overthrew their doctors and nurses and usurped their positions, locking them up as lunatics. These lunatics were led by a man who claimed to have invented a better method of treating mental illness, and who allowed no visitors except for "a very stupid-looking young gentleman of whom he had no reason to be afraid." The narrator asks how the hospital staff rebelled and returned things to order. Just then, loud noises are heard and the actual hospital staff breaks from their confines. It is revealed that the dinner guests were, in fact, the patients who had just recently taken over. As part of their uprising, the inmates had treated the staff to "tarring and feathering." The keepers now put the real patients, including Monsieur Maillard, back in their cells, while the narrator, who is the "stupid-looking young gentleman" mentioned by Monsieur Maillard, admits he has yet to find any of the works of Dr. "Tarr" and Professor "Fether."

The "system of soothing"

Monsieur Maillard's system avoided all punishments and did not confine its patients. They were granted much freedom and were not forced to wear hospital gowns but instead "were permitted to roam about the house and grounds in the ordinary apparel of persons in right mind." Doctors "humored" their patients by never contradicting their fantasies or hallucinations. For example, if a man thought he was a chicken, doctors would treat him as a chicken, giving him corn to eat, etc.

The system was apparently very popular. Monsieur Maillard says that all the "Maisons de Santé" of France have adopted it. The narrator remarks that after the patient revolt is crushed, that system is reinstated at the asylum he visits--though modified in certain ways that are intended to reform it.

Historical background

At the time this story was written, care for the insane was a highly political issue. People were calling for asylum reform at a time when the mentally ill were treated like prisoners. It is also during a time when increased acquittals due to the insanity defense was being criticized for allowing criminals to avoid punishment.[1]

Publication history

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" was held by editors for several months before finally being published in the November 1845 issue of Graham's Magazine.[2]

Adaptations

One of the plays given at the Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris was "Le Systéme du Dr Goudron et Pr Plume" (1903), adapted by André de Lorde.
The surreal Mexican film La Mansión de la Locura (1973), in English The Mansion of Madness, by Juan López Moctezuma.
Director S.F. Brownrigg's movie The Forgotten (1973), also known as Death Ward #13 and Don't Look in the Basement.
"(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" is the fifth track on Tales of Mystery and Imagination, an album by The Alan Parsons Project of music inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer based part of his film Lunacy on this story. The film was also inspired by Poe's 1844 short story, "The Premature Burial," and the works of the Marquis de Sade.
A one-act opera called A Method for Madness (1999), composed by David S. Bernstein, American composer, and libretto by Charles Kondek.

References

1.^ Cleman, John. "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense," collected in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. p. 66-7 ISBN 0-7910-6173-6
2.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. p. 469. ISBN 0801857309

Deathday: Robert Bloch 1994 - Father of PSYCHO

(This photo is from my 1989 interview with RB.)

Robert Albert Bloch (April 5, 1917 – September 23, 1994) was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle. H. P. Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent. He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America. Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960s, he wrote three scripts for Star Trek. In 2008, The Library of America selected Bloch’s story “The Shambles of Ed Gein” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

Life

Bloch was born in Chicago, the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884 - 1952), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880 - 1944), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.

Bloch died in 1994 in Los Angeles. He was cremated and interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Career

During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft, a frequent contributor to that magazine, became one of his favorite writers. As a teenager, Bloch befriended and corresponded with Lovecraft, who gave the promising youngster advice on his own fiction-writing efforts.[1] Bloch's first professional sales, at the age of just seventeen, were to Weird Tales with the short stories "The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb". Bloch's early stories were strongly influenced by Lovecraft. Indeed, a number of his stories were set in, and extended, the world of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It was Bloch who invented, for example, the oft-cited Mythos texts De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.

The young Bloch appears, thinly disguised, as the character "Robert Blake" in Lovecraft's story "The Haunter of the Dark", which is dedicated to Bloch. In this story, Lovecraft kills off the Bloch character, repaying a courtesy Bloch earlier paid Lovecraft with his tale "The Shambler from the Stars", in which the Lovecraft-inspired figure dies; the story goes so far as to use Bloch's then-current street address in Milwaukee. (Bloch even had a signed certificate from Lovecraft [and some of his creations] giving Bloch permission to kill Lovecraft off in a story.) Bloch later wrote a third tale, "The Shadow From the Steeple," picking up where "The Haunter of the Dark" finished.

After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, where he became one of its most popular authors. He also began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He gradually evolved away from Lovecraftian imitations towards a unique style of his own. One of the first distinctly "Blochian" stories was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which was published in Weird Tales in 1943. The story was Bloch's take on the Jack the Ripper legend, and was filled out with more genuine factual details of the case than many other fictional treatments.[2] Bloch followed up this story with a number of others in a similar vein dealing with half-historic, half-legendary figures such as the Man in the Iron Mask ("Iron Mask," 1944), the Marquis de Sade ("The Skull of the Marquis de Sade," 1945) and Lizzie Borden ("Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...," 1946).

Campaign manager for Carl Zeidler

In 1939, Bloch was contacted by James Doolittle, who was managing the campaign for a little-known assistant attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin named Carl Zeidler. He was asked to work on his speechwriting, advertising, and photo ops, in collaboration with Harold Gauer. They created elaborate campaign shows; in Bloch's 1993 autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with — for instance, the original releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling shtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's victory, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries. He ends the story with a wryly philosophical point:

If Carl Zeidler had not asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in Unknown. Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I had not written a little vampire story called "The Cloak," Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee.

Psycho and screenwriting

Bloch became most famous as the author of the novel Psycho, one of the first examples of modern urban horror relying on realism rather than the supernatural[citation needed], which was adapted by Joseph Stefano into the screenplay for the 1960 film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He had written an earlier split-personality short story, "The Real Bad Friend," which appeared in the February, 1957 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that foreshadowed the 1959 novel Psycho. His best-known work as a screenwriter is probably The Night Walker (1964), which he wrote for William Castle, although he also penned several scripts for the original series of Star Trek including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," "Wolf in the Fold," and "Catspaw." He seemed happiest, among his television work, with his contributions to the Boris Karloff-hosted series Thriller.

Bloch also contributed to Harlan Ellison's science fiction anthology, Dangerous Visions. His story, "A Toy for Juliette," evoked both the Marquis de Sade and Jack the Ripper. In fact, Ellison's own contribution to the anthology was a direct follow-up of Bloch's, and was titled "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World."

Writings on Bloch

An early reference work by Australia's Graeme Flanagan, Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography (1979) includes valuable material including interviews with Bloch and memoirs by fellow writers such as Harlan Ellison, Mary Elizabeth Counselman and Fritz Leiber.

Randall D. Larson has authored three reference books about Robert Bloch: The Robert Bloch Reader's Guide (1986, a literary analysis of Bloch's entire output through 1986), The Complete Robert Bloch (1986, an illustrated bibliography of Bloch's writing), and The Robert Bloch Companion (1986, collected interviews). In addition, an issue of Paperback Parade magazine (No. 39, August 1994) contains two articles by Larson on collecting Bloch - "Paperblochs: Robert Bloch in Paperback" and "Robert Bloch in Paperback."

There is an essay on Bloch's work, with particular reference to the novels Psycho and The Scarf, in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001). Joshi examines Bloch's literary relationship with Lovecraft in a further essay in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004).

A new essay collection focusing on a range of Bloch's work is Robert Bloch: the Man Who Collected Psychos, edited by Benjamin J. Szumskyj (McFarland, 2009).

Bibliography

Novels

The Scarf (1947, rev. 1966)
Spiderweb (1954)
The Kidnapper (1954)
The Will to Kill (1954)
Shooting Star (1958) (note: published in a double volume with the ss collection Terror in the Night)
This Crowded Earth (1958)
Psycho (1959) (adapted into the 1960 film, Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; later remade in 1998 by Gus Van Sant)
The Dead Beat (1960)
Firebug (1961)
The Couch (1962)
Terror (1962)
Ladies Day / This Crowded Earth (1968)
The Star Stalker (1968)
The Todd Dossier (1969)
Sneak Preview (1971)
It's All in Your Mind (1971)
Night World (1972)
American Gothic (1974)
Strange Eons (1978) (a Cthulhu Mythos novel)
There Is a Serpent in Eden (1979)
Psycho II (1982) (unrelated to the film of the same name)
Night of the Ripper (1984)
Unholy Trinity (1986) (collects The Scarf, The Couch and The Dead Beat)
Lori (1989)
Screams: Three Novels of Suspense (collects The Will to Kill, Firebug and The Star Stalker)
Psycho House (1990) (unrelated to the films Psycho II, Psycho III or Psycho IV: The Beginning)
The Jekyll Legacy (1991)
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1991) (Pulphouse; a 100-copy hardbound signed edition of Bloch's famous short story)
The Thing (1993) (Pretentious Press; a limited edition of 85 copies, only 9 bound in cloth, of the author's first appearance in print - a parody of H.P. Lovecraft which originally appeared in the April 1932 issue of The Quill, his Lincoln High School literary magazine)
Psycho - The 35th Anniversary Edition (1994) (Gauntlet Press; limited edition of 500 copies; the last work to be signed by Bloch before his death; includes a new intro by Richard Matheson and a new Afterword by Ray Bradbury)

Short-story collections

The Opener of the Way (1945)
Sea Kissed (1945)
Terror in the Night (1958) (note: published in a double volume with the novel Shooting Star)
Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares (1960)
Blood Runs Cold (1961)
Nightmares (1961)
More Nightmares (1961)
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1962)
Atoms and Evil (1962)
Horror 7 (1963)
Bogey Men (1963)
House of the Hatchet (1965)
The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (1965)
Tales in a Jugular Vein (1965)
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
The Living Demons (1967)
Dragons and Nightmares (1968)
Bloch and Bradbury (1969)
Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow (1971)
House of the Hatchet (1976)
The King of Terrors (1977)
The Best of Robert Bloch (1977)
Cold Chills (1977)
Out of the Mouths of Graves (1978)
Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of (1979)
Mysteries of the Worm (1981)
Midnight Pleasures (1987)
Lost in Space and Time With Lefty Feep (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 1: Final Reckonings (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 2: Bitter Ends (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 3: Last Rites (1987)
Fear and Trembling (1989)
Mysteries of the Worm (rev. 1993) from Chaosium books
The Early Fears (1994)
Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies (1998)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 1: The Devil With You! (1999)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 2: Hell on Earth (2000)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 3: Crimes and Punishments (2002)
The Reader's Bloch: Volume 1: The Fear Planet and Other Unusual Destinations (2005)
The Reader's Bloch: Volume 2: Skeleton in the Closet and Other Stories (2009)

Non-fiction

The Eighth Stage of Fandom (1962)
Out of My Head (1986)
Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (1993)
Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master (1995)

Movies

The following is a list of films based on Bloch's work. For some of these he wrote the original screenplay; for others, he supplied the story or a novel (as in the case of Psycho) on which the screenplay was based.

Psycho (1960)
The Couch (1962)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1962)
Strait-Jacket (1964)
The Night Walker (1964)
The Skull (1965)
The Psychopath (1966)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Deadly Bees (1967)
The House That Dripped Blood (1970)
Asylum (1972)
The Cat Creature (Tv movie 1973)
The Dead Don't Die (Tv movie 1974)
The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978)
Psycho (1998)

References

1.^ Haining, Peter (1975). The Fantastic Pulps. Victor Gollancz Ltd. ISBN 0-575-02000-8.
2.^ Zinna, Eduardo. "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper". Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" Published 1839

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. It contains within it the poem "The Haunted Palace," which had earlier been published separately in the April 1839 issue of the Baltimore Museum magazine.

Plot

The tale opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's symptoms can be described according to its terminology. They include hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, death-like trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace," then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be sentient, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.

Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning.

The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Trist, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass of which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter.

As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.

Analysis

"The Fall of the House of Usher" was published widely in the September 1839 issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine."The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered the best example of Poe's "totality," where every element and detail is related and relevant.[1]

The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, a late 18th Century novel which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre.

The article written by Walter Evans "'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Poe's Theory of the Tale," reprinted in Short Story Criticism, says the house and the setting are really a reflection of Roderick Usher. As described in "The Fall of the House of Usher," could symbolize the "'bleak' cheeks, huge eyes ... 'rank' and slightly bushy mustache, and perhaps even 'white trunks of decayed' teeth" of Usher.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt.[2] These emotions center on Roderick Usher who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart", his disease causes his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac.[3] Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family, plays a significant role in the story. It is the first "character" that the narrator introduces to the reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in the first paragraph. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized in Roderick's poem "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom.[4]

L. Sprague de Camp, in his Lovecraft: A Biography [p. 246f], wrote that "[a]ccording to the late [Poe expert] Thomas O. Mabbott, [H. P.] Lovecraft, in "Supernatural Horror", solved a problem in the interpretation of Poe" by arguing that "Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and the house all shared one common soul". The explicit psychological dimension of this tale has prompted many critics to analyze it as a description of the human psyche, comparing, for instance, the House to the unconscious, and its central crack to the personality split which is called dissociative identity disorder. Mental disorder is also evoked through the themes of melancholy, possible incest, and vampirism. An incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is not explicitly stated, but seems implied by the strange attachment between the two.[5]

Major themes

The doppelgänger theme, prominent in such works of Poe as "William Wilson," appears as well in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The reflection of the house in the tarn is described in the opening paragraph, and "a striking similitude between the brother and sister" is mentioned when Madeline "dies." Poe uses the theme of the death and resurrection of a woman here as well as in "Ligeia" and "Morella." The theme of mental illness is explored in this work, as it is in numerous other tales such as "Berenice." Interment while alive is also explored in "The Premature Burial," "Berenice" and "The Cask of Amontillado." There are also various Gothic elements, such as the decrepit castle and tarn, whose signs of decay reflect the mental condition of Usher, which is rapidly deteriorating.

Allusions and references

The opening epigraph quotes "Le Refus" (1831) by the French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), translated to English as "his heart is a suspended lute, as soon as it is touched, it resounds". Béranger's original text reads "Mon cœur" (my heart) and not "Son cœur" (his/her heart). The narrator describes one of Usher's musical compositions as "a ... singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber". Poe here refers to a popular piano work of his time — which, though going by the title "Weber's Last Waltz" was actually composed by Carl Gottlieb Reissiger (1798–1859).[6] A manuscript copy of the music was found among Weber's papers upon his death in 1826 and the work was mistakenly attributed to him.

Usher's painting reminds the narrator of the Swiss-born British painter Henry Fuseli (1741–1825).

Roderick Usher's library

Though Poe does not always render the titles correctly, all of the books mentioned in the story are real works except for The Mad Trist. No book like the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae exists exactly as Poe described it, though there is a real (and very rare) book by that title, which means "The Office of the Dead as sung by the choir of the Church of Mainz." Aside from these, the books are:

Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset (1709–1777): Vert-Vert (1734), La Chartreuse
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527): Novella di Belfagor Arcidiavolo (1545)
Emanuel Swedenborg né Swedberg (1688–1772): De Coelo et Ejus Mirabilibus, et de Inferno, et Auditis et Visis (1758)
Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754): Niels Klims underjordiske Rejse (1741)
Robert Fludd/Robertus de Fluctibus (1574–1637):
Utriusque Macrocosmi at Microcosmi Historia (published between 1617 and 1619)
Integrum Morborum Mysterium: Medicinae Catholicae (1631)
Joannes Indagine (1467–1537): Die Kunst der Chiromantzey (c.1523)
Marinus Cureau de la Chambre (1594–1669): Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie (1653)
Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853): Das alte Buch und die Reise ins Blaue hinein. Eine Mährchen-Novelle (1835)
Tommaso Campanella né Giovanni Domenico Campanella (1568–1639): Civitas Solis (1623)
Nicolau Aymerich (c. 1320–1399): Directorium Inquisitorum (1376)
Pomponius Mela: De situ orbis (c.43 CE)

Notes

Fludd wrote two works which had sections on chiromancy (palmistry). Both have been given above. The relevant sections are entitled, respectively, De Scientia Animae Naturalis cum vitali seu astrologia chiromantica and De Signis sine praesagis chiromanticis. Campanella originally wrote City of the Sun in Italian in 1602 as La città del Sole before rewriting it in Latin between 1613 and 1623, and its subsequent publication in Latin as Civitas Solis in Frankfurt in 1623. De la Chambre later published Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie as part of L'Art de Connaitre Les Hommes in 1662.

Literary significance and criticism

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered Poe's most famous work of prose.[7] This highly unsettling macabre work is considered to be the masterpiece of American Gothic literature. Indeed, as in many of his tales, Poe borrows much from the Gothic tradition. Still, as G. R. Thomson writes in his Introduction to Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe [p 36], "the tale has long been hailed as a masterpiece of Gothic horror; it is also a masterpiece of dramatic irony and structural symbolism."

In fact, "The Fall of the House of Usher" has been criticized for being too formulaic. Poe was criticized for following his own patterns established in works like "Morella" and "Ligeia" using stock characters in stock scenes and stock situations. Repetitive themes like an unidentifiable disease, madness, and resurrection are also criticized.[8]

Poe's inspiration for the story may be based upon events of the Usher House, located on Boston's Lewis Wharf. As that story goes, a sailor and the young wife of the older owner were caught and entombed in their trysting spot by her husband. When the Usher House was torn down in 1800, two bodies were found embraced in a cavity in the cellar.[9]

Scholars speculate that Poe, who was an influence on Herman Melville, inspired the character of Ahab in Melville's novel Moby-Dick. John McAleer maintained that the idea for "objectifying Ahab's flawed character" came from the "evocative force" of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." In both Ahab and the house of Usher, the appearance of fundamental soundness is visibly flawed — by Ahab's livid scar, and by the fissure in the masonry of Usher.[10]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

In the low-budget Roger Corman film from 1960, known in the United States as House of Usher, the narrator falls in love with the sickly Madeline, much to Roderick's horror. As Roderick reveals, the Usher family has a history of evil and cruelty so great that he and Madeline pledged in their youth never to have children and to allow their family to die with them. When Madeline falls into a deathlike catalepsy, her brother (who knows that she is still alive) rushes to have her placed in the family crypt. When she wakes up, Madeline goes insane from being buried alive and breaks free with insanity-induced strength. She confronts her brother and begins throttling him to death. Suddenly the house, already aflame due to a fallen lit candle, begins to collapse and the narrator flees as Roderick is killed by Madeline and both she and the Usher's sole servant are consumed by the falling house. The film was Corman's first in a series of eight films inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1980 the Czech surrealist film maker Jan Švankmajer adapted the story as a short film relying entirely on imagery and inanimate objects in place of actors.

In the 2008 David DeCoteau film, it is implied that the house is a living being, dependent on the human souls that Roderick and Madeline provide it with. The central character is called Victor Reynolds, a reference to the name allegedly called out by Poe the night before his death.

William Beckett announced on July 12, 2010 that his friend Nathan Wrann will be making a "short film adaptation" of the story to begin filming in December that he will be starring in (that post has since been deleted and replaced with an update post)[11][12][13][14]

List of films

La Chute de la maison Usher (France, 1928) by Jean Epstein
The Fall of the House of Usher (US, 1928) by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber
The Fall of the House of Usher (UK, 1949) directed by Ivan Barnett
House of Usher (a.k.a. Fall of the House of Usher and The Mysterious House of Usher) (1960) by Roger Corman with Vincent Price
The Fall of the House of Usher Starred Denholm Elliott and Susannah York in the UK ITV series Mystery and Imagination (1966) (TV)
'"Zánik domu Usheru" (The Fall of the House of Usher) (1980) (animated version by Jan Švankmajer)
"Histoires extraordinaires: La chute de la maison Usher" (1981) (TV) with Mathieu Carrière
Revenge in the House of Usher (1982)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1982) (TV) with Martin Landau and Ray Walston
"El hundimiento de la Casa de Usher'" (1983) by Jesús Franco with Howard Vernon
The House of Usher (1988) with Oliver Reed
The House of Usher (2006)
House of Usher (2008) by David DeCoteau
The Fall of the House of Usher (short film) (2011) by Nathan Wrann

Plays

The Fall of the House of Usher (1974) adaptation by Steven Berkoff
The Fall of the House of Usher (2009) musical adaptation written by Brent Cirves and composed by Mike Johnson for the 2009 Capital Fringe Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival[15]

Music

Between 1908 and 1917, French composer Claude Debussy worked on an opera called La chute de la maison Usher. The libretto was his own, based on Poe, and the work was to be a companion piece to another short opera (Le diable dans le beffroi) based on Poe's "The Devil in the Belfry." At Debussy's death the work was unfinished, however. In recent years completions have been attempted by two different musicologists.

Lady Eleanor, a song first released in 1970 by the British folk-rock band Lindisfarne is based on this story.

The Alan Parsons Project's first release (1976's Tales of Mystery and Imagination) features a long instrumental named after this story. The track has five parts: "Prelude," "Arrival," "Intermezzo," "Pavane," and "Fall" and its style showcases 20th century classical music and progressive rock. The music incorporates fragments of Debussy's unfinished opera.

Another operatic version, composed by Philip Glass in 1987 with a libretto by Arthur Yorinks, was presented by the Nashville Opera in 2009.[16]

Peter Hammill composed an opera based on the story between 1973 and 1991 and released it in 1991. In this work, the house itself becomes a vocal part, to be sung by the same performer who sings the role of Roderick Usher. The libretto by Chris Judge Smith adopts the subplot of a romantic attraction between Madeline Usher and the narrator, who is given the name Montresor. This recording still had drums in it though and thus was not a real opera. Hammill released a totally overhauled version in 1999, without drums but with an added violin and layers of electric guitar that created an orchestral sound. He also resang all of his own vocals.

This story is also the inspiration for the classical guitarist Nikita Koshkin's "Usher-Waltz," a piece for solo guitar.

Further, the story served as inspiration to the American composer Ian Krouse's "Roderick Usher’s ‘Phantasmion’ (Grand Sonata ‘Quasi una fantasia’) Op. 25, 1836," which was composed for - and premiered by - classical guitarist Scott Tennant.

References

1.^ Beebe, Maurice. "The Universe of Roderick Usher" as collected in Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Robert Regan, ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1967. p. 123.
2.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0815410287 p. 111
3.^ Butler, David. "Usher's Hypochondriasis: Mental Alienation and Romantic Idealism in Poe's Gothic Tales" as collected in On Poe: The Best from "American Literature". Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8223-1311-1 p. 189–90.
4.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0815410287 p. 111.
5.^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0-8071-2321-8 p. 297.
6.^ E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore — A Few Minor Poe Topics
7.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Introduction: Poe in Our Time" collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-512150-3 p. 9
8.^ Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. p. 77
9.^ A.I.A. Guide to Boston. Susan and Michael Southworth p. 59
10.^ McAleer, John J. "Poe and Gothic Elements in Moby-Dick", Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 27 (II Quarter 1962): 34.
11.^ The William Beckett Blog update post
12.^ Alternative Press news story
13.^ Nathan's blog answering questions and introducing the project
14.^ Nathan's blog update post
15.^ http://www.usherthemusical.com/
16.^ Waleson, Heidi. "Two by Philip Glass." Wall Street Journal. year = 2009.

Further reading

Evans, Walter. "'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Poe's Theory of the Tale." Studies in Short Fiction. 14.2 (1977): 137–44. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1988. 403–5.

"The Raven" Published 1845

Poe first brought "The Raven" to his friend and former employer George Rex Graham of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. Graham declined the poem, which may not have been in its final version, though he gave Poe $15 as charity. Poe then sold the poem to The American Review, which paid him $9 for it, and printed "The Raven" in its February 1845 issue under the pseudonym "Quarles", a reference to the English poet Francis Quarles. The poem's first publication with Poe's name was in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, as an "advance copy." Nathaniel Parker Willis, editor of the Mirror, introduced it as "unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it." Following this publication the poem appeared in periodicals across the United States, including the New York Tribune (February 4, 1845), Broadway Journal (vol. 1, February 8, 1845), Southern Literary Messenger (vol. 11, March 1845), Literary Emporium (vol. 2, December 1845), Saturday Courier, 16 (July 25, 1846), and the Richmond Examiner (September 25, 1849).[31] It has also appeared in numerous anthologies, starting with Poets and Poetry of America edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1847.

The immediate success of "The Raven" prompted Wiley and Putnam to publish a collection of Poe's prose called Tales in June 1845; it was his first book in five years. They also published a collection of his poetry called The Raven and Other Poems on November 19 by Wiley and Putnam which included a dedication to Barrett as "the Noblest of her Sex." The small volume, his first book of poetry in 14 years, was 100 pages and sold for 31 cents. In addition to the title poem, it included "The Valley of Unrest," "Bridal Ballad," "The City in the Sea," "Eulalie," "The Conqueror Worm," "The Haunted Palace" and eleven others. In the preface, Poe referred to them as "trifles" which had been altered without his permission as they made "the rounds of the press."

In part due to its dual printing, "The Raven" made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity. Readers began to identify poem with poet, earning Poe the nickname "The Raven." The poem was soon widely reprinted, imitated, and parodied. Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, "I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life—except in hope, which is by no means bankable."

The New World said, "Everyone reads the Poem and praises it... justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power." The Pennsylvania Inquirer reprinted it with the heading "A Beautiful Poem." Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe, "Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' horror, here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by 'Nevermore'." Poe's popularity resulted in invitations to recite "The Raven" and to lecture – in public and at private social gatherings. At one literary salon, a guest noted, "to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven... is an event in one's life." It was recalled by someone who experienced it, "He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite... in the most melodious of voices... So marvelous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken." Parodies sprung up especially in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and included "The Craven" by "Poh!," "The Gazelle," "The Whippoorwill," and "The Turkey." One parody, "The Pole-Cat," caught the attention of Andrew Johnston, a lawyer who sent it on to Abraham Lincoln. Though Lincoln admitted he had "several hearty laughs," he had not, at that point read "The Raven." However, Lincoln eventually read and memorized the poem.

"The Raven" was praised by fellow writers William Gilmore Simms and Margaret Fuller, though it was denounced by William Butler Yeats, who called it "insincere and vulgar... its execution a rhythmical trick." Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I see nothing in it." A critic for the Southern Quarterly Review wrote in July 1848 that the poem was ruined by "a wild and unbridled extravagance" and that minor things like a rapping at the door and a fluttering curtain would only affect "a child who had been frightened to the verge of idiocy by terrible ghost stories." An anonymous writer going by the pseudonym "Outis" suggested in the Evening Mirror that "The Raven" was plagiarized from a poem called "The Bird of the Dream" by an unnamed author. The writer showed 18 similarities between the poems and was made as a response to Poe's accusations of plagiarism against Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It has been suggested Outis was really Cornelius Conway Felton, if not Poe himself. After Poe's death, his friend Thomas Holley Chivers said "The Raven" was plagiarized from one of his poems. In particular, he claimed to have been the inspiration for the meter of the poem as well as the refrain "nevermore."

"The Raven" has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's "The Jewbird" in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" in 1976. The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music and more.

The Addams Family (TV series) 1964-1966 - Starring John Astin

The Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 installments on ABC from September 18, 1964 to April 8, 1966. It is often compared to its working-class rival, The Munsters, which ran for the same two seasons and achieved somewhat higher Nielsen ratings. The Addams Family ranked 23rd in its first season, with a 23.9 rating.[2] The show is the first adaptation of the characters to feature The Addams Family Theme.

It was originally produced by Filmways, Inc. at General Service Studios in Hollywood, California. Successor company MGM Television (via The Program Exchange for broadcast syndication, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for home video/DVD) owns the rights to the show. At one point, distribution rights were licensed to Worldvision Enterprises.

Premise

The Addamses are a close-knit extended family with decidedly macabre interests. They are humans with supernatural abilities. No explanation for their powers is explicitly given in the series.

The very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams is madly in love with his refined wife Morticia. Along with their two children, Wednesday and Pugsley, Uncle Fester and Grandmama, they reside in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire style mansion, attended by their servants, Lurch, the towering butler, and Thing, a hand that usually appears out of a small wooden box. Occasionally, episodes would feature relatives or other members of their weird subculture, such as Cousin Itt or Morticia's older sister, Ophelia.

Much of the humor derives from their culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even though their guests often have evil intentions. They are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their (to them) good natured and normal behavior since they are under the impression that their tastes are shared by most of society. Accordingly they view "conventional" tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. For example, Fester once cites a neighboring family's meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are "nothing but riff-raff." Ironically, many of the things that the Addams family was in favor of that seemed laughable in the mid-1960s have become mainsteam. Homeschooling, protection of swamps (now Federally protected as wetlands), banning of toy guns, and banning of classic fairy tales in schools were all plotlines in the show that were comic fodder at the time. A recurring theme in the epilogue of many episodes was the Addamses getting an update on the most recent visitor to their home, either via something in the newspaper or a phone call. Invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, the visitor would be institutionalized, change professions, move out of the country, or have some other negative life-changing event. The Addamses would always misinterpret the update and see it as good news for that most recent visitor.

The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script. Much of the dialog is his (albeit uncredited). As a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit), has been frequently compared to Groucho Marx. In addition, the series often employed the same type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films. It lampooned politics ("Gomez, The Politician" and "Gomez, The People's Choice"), the legal system ("The Addams Family in Court"), Beatlemania ("Lurch, The Teenage Idol"), and Hollywood ("My Fair Cousin Itt").

Characters

Main characters

Gomez Addams (John Astin) - Gomez is passionately in love with his wife, often referring to her as "Cara Mia." His ardor is greatly intensified when she speaks French (a quirk that first appears in the eleventh episode, "The Addams Family Meet the V.I.P.s"). Before that his ardor was aroused when she called him "Bubele" a German-Bavarian, and Yiddish [3][4] word meaning "darling" or "sweetie." Gomez is very wealthy, due to owning numerous companies and stocks. He doesn't seem to regard money itself as a priority and squanders money cavalierly while remaining wealthy. Gomez spends a great deal of time with his family and does not go out to work. He refers to Spain as his "ancestral home" with his family background referenced as "Castilian," and he occasionally uses Spanish words and phrases. He can perform rapid and complicated calculations in his head. He is remarkably acrobatic and can easily dismount from a hanging position upon a chandelier.

Morticia Addams (Carolyn Jones) - Morticia is a cultivated and beautiful woman who dabbles in art, raises flesh-eating plants, and trims her roses by clipping off the buds and arranging the stems in a vase ("Oh, the thorns are lovely this year"). She can light candles with her fingertips and emit smoke directly from her person. With her aristocratic detachment, she is often the calm center of the chaotic events of the household.

Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) - Uncle Fester is Morticia's exuberant, kind, and electric uncle. He frequently places a lightbulb in his mouth, where it lights up. When angered by outsiders, he may grab for a blunderbuss and announce that he will shoot the offender in the back.

Lurch (Ted Cassidy) - Lurch is the household butler. Morticia and Gomez summon him by means of a bell pull in the form of a hangman's noose, which rings the massive bell located in the mansion's bell tower; the resulting gong shakes the entire house when the noose is pulled. When Lurch appears (usually immediately thereafter), he responds with a baritone "You rang?" According to IMDb, Lurch was intended to be a non-speaking part, as the Charles Addams cartoon character was silent. However, Cassidy improvised the line during his audition, and it was well received and incorporated into the show. When questions are posed to Lurch his primary response is a deep annoyed grunt, from which the family glean complex meanings. He is superhumanly strong and often plays the harpsichord (the music is actually played by The Addams Family composer Vic Mizzy). Lurch is very high-minded about visitors; when a plainclothes policeman (played by George Neise) visited the family, Lurch patted him down and regarded him suspiciously when he found his gun. Neise showed Lurch his badge, whereupon Lurch returned the gun. Lurch occasionally regards his employers' activities with some dubiousness much like a servant expressing disdain for the idle rich. Ted Cassidy made a cameo appearance as Lurch on an episode of the "Batman" TV series.

Grandmama Addams (Blossom Rock) - Mother of Gomez (who occasionally calls her "Mamacita"). She is a witch who conjures up potions, spells and hexes. She also dabbles in fortune-telling, though it is obvious that, in this respect at least, she is a charlatan. Her given name is never revealed in the series.

Wednesday Friday Addams (Lisa Loring) - Gomez and Morticia's daughter. She is the youngest member (six years old) of the family, she is a strange yet sweet-natured little girl who pursues such hobbies as raising spiders, beheading dolls (called "Marie Antoinette," "Mary Queen of Scots," and "Little Red Riding Hood"), and practicing ballet in a black tutu. Her favorite pet is a black widow spider named Homer, although she also has a lizard named Lucifer. She is strong enough to bring her father to his knees in a judo hold.

Pugsley Addams (Ken Weatherwax) - Gomez and Morticia' son and Wednesday's older brother. Kind-hearted and smart, occasionally conforming to "conventional" standards contrary to his family, he nevertheless shares a close bond with his parents and sister, the latter whom he often plays with. He also enjoys engineering various machines (sometimes with Gomez), playing with blasting caps, and his pet octopus Aristotle. Despite his pudginess, Pugsley is, like his father, exceptionally agile, able to out-climb a gorilla and hang from branches by his teeth.

Thing T. Thing - A disembodied hand that appears out of boxes and other conveniently placed containers. Thing apparently has the ability to teleport from container to container, almost instantly: Thing sometimes appears from different containers at opposite ends of the room within seconds of each other. Though Ted Cassidy would often portray Thing, assistant director Jack Voglin would often portray Thing in scenes where Lurch and Thing appear together.

Recurring characters

Cousin Itt (Felix Silla in most episodes, Roger Arroyo for two episodes) - Gomez's cousin, a short entity completely hidden by his almost head-to-floor-long hair. He speaks in rapid unintelligible gibberish which the family has no difficulty understanding (according to Felix Silla's commentary on the DVD release, the voice for Cousin Itt was recorded by a member of the crew in post-production). Gomez once asks him what is under it all; Itt answers, "Roots." In one episode, Itt is said to have "the eye of an eagle...plus a few of his own." Nevertheless, he wears conventional sunglasses, supposedly so people will not pester him for autographs.

Ophelia - Morticia's sister. Gomez was originally engaged to her in an arranged marriage, but when he saw 22-year old Morticia (dressed in a grown-up version of Wednesday's clothing), he was smitten and fell in love with her; when she spoke French, he claimed that for the first time in his life, his sinuses were cleared and his bronchitis was gone. Ophelia was played by Carolyn Jones in a blonde wig (a staple of 1960's sitcom twins). One quirk of Ophelia's is that the flower growing in her hair had roots that travelled down into her foot; another is her love of judo, with which she can hurl men (usually Gomez) several feet.

Grandma Hester Frump (Margaret Hamilton) - The mother of Morticia and Ophelia.

Mayor Arthur J. Hansen (Peter Baer) - The mayor of the town that the Addams Family live in.

Reunions

A reunion film, Halloween with the New Addams Family [5], aired on NBC in October 1977 and starred most of the original cast, except for Blossom Rock (Grandmama), who was very ill at the time and was replaced by Phyllis actress Jane Rose. The picture also featured extended family members who were created specifically for the production and never appeared in the television series, such as Gomez's brother, Pancho (played by Henry Darrow) and two additional children, Wednesday Junior and Pugsley Junior. It was originally intended for a pilot for a sequel, but no other episodes were ordered.

The interior set of the Addams mansion had previously been used for the 1972 film Ben.

Syndication

As of May 2009, the show can be purchased on iTunes, and can be streamed for free in the US on IMDB, YouTube, Hulu, and Minisodes are available on Crackle You can also watch all the series vol.1-3 on netflix.

DVD releases

MGM Home Entertainment has released The Addams Family on DVD in Region 1, 2 and 4 in three volume sets.

References

1.^ "David Levy; Producer Created 'Addams Family'". LA Times. January 31, 2000.
2.^ "The 'Addams Family' Tree". LA Times. June 9, 1991.
3.^ Yiddish Expressions
4.^ Reminiscing 'Bout Bubba and others
5.^ IMDb.com – Halloween with the New Addams Family
6.^ The Addams Family DVD news: Volume 3 date and details | TVShowsOnDVD.com
7.^ The Addams Family DVD news: *Snap* *Snap* Complete Series Announced | TVShowsOnDVD.com

Deathday: Elizabeth Bathory 1560-1614 Countess & Serial Killer

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová in Slovak, 17 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Although in modern times she has been labeled the most prolific female serial killer in history, evidence of her alleged crimes is scant and her guilt is debated. Nevertheless, she is remembered as the "Blood Countess" and as the "Bloody Lady of Čachtice," after the castle near Trencsén (today Trenčín) in the Kingdom of Hungary (today's Slovakia), where she spent most of her adult life.

After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

Later writings about the case have led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth and subsequently also to comparisons with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and to modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

The case of Elizabeth Báthory inspired numerous stories during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most common motif of these works was that of the countess bathing in her victims' blood in order to retain beauty or youth.

This legend appeared in print for the first time in 1729, in the Jesuit scholar László Turóczi’s Tragica Historia, the first written account of the Báthory case. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this certainty was questioned, and sadistic pleasure was considered a far more plausible motive for Elizabeth Báthory's crimes. In 1817, the witness accounts (which had surfaced in 1765) were published for the first time, suggesting that the bloodbaths, for the purpose of preserving her youth, were legend. However, there were accounts of Bathory showering herself in the blood of her victims, and drawing her victims' blood by biting them.

The legend nonetheless persisted in the popular imagination. Some versions of the story were told with the purpose of denouncing female vanity, while other versions aimed to entertain or thrill their audience. The ethnic divisions in Eastern Europe and financial incentives for tourism contribute to the problems with historical accuracy in understanding Elizabeth Bathory. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Elizabeth Báthory has continued to appear as a character in music, film, plays, books, games and toys and to serve as an inspiration for similar characters.

Deathday: Shirley Jackson 1916-1965 Author "The Haunting of Hill House"

Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916, San Francisco, California - August 8, 1965, Bennington, Vermont) was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for the short story "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests a secret, sinister underside to bucolic small-town America. In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."

In the July 22, 1948, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle Jackson offered the following in response to persistent queries from her readers about her intentions:

"Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies," but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb," to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as evidenced by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned 'The Lottery,' and she felt that they at least understood the story."

Literary life

Born Shirley Hardie Jackson in San Francisco to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson, Shirley and her family lived in the community of Burlingame, California, an affluent middle-class suburb that would feature in Shirley's first novel The Road Through the Wall. The Jackson family then relocated to Rochester, New York, where Shirley attended Brighton High School and graduated in 1934. For college, she first attended the University of Rochester (from which she was "asked to leave") before graduating with a BA from Syracuse University in 1940.

While a student at Syracuse, Shirley became involved with the campus literary magazine, through which she met future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who would become a noted literary critic. For Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Harcraft's Twentieth Century Authors (1954), she wrote:

"I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains, naturally, no pertinent facts. I was born in San Francisco in 1919 and spent most of my early life in California. I was married in 1940 to Stanley Edgar Hyman, critic and numismatist, and we live in Vermont, in a quiet rural community with fine scenery and comfortably far away from city life. Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. The children are Laurence, Joanne, Sarah and Barry: my books include three novels, The Road Through The Wall, Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest and a collection of short stories, The Lottery. Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children."

Although Jackson claimed to have been born in 1919 in order to appear younger than her husband, biographer Judy Oppenheimer determined that she was actually born in 1916.

The Hymans eventually settled in North Bennington, Vermont, where Stanley Hyman became a professor at Bennington College while Shirley continued to publish novels and short stories while caring for their children Laurence (Laurie), Joanne (Jannie), Sarah (Sally), and Barry. Eventually the Hyman children would come to their own brand of literary fame as fictionalised versions of themselves in their mother's short stories. The Hymans were well-known for being colorful, generous hosts who surrounded themselves with literary talents, including Ralph Ellison. Both were enthusiastic readers whose personal library was estimated at over 100,000 books.

In addition to her adult literary novels, Jackson also wrote a children's novel, Nine Magic Wishes, available in an edition illustrated by her grandson, Miles Hyman, as well as a children's play based on Hansel and Gretel and entitled The Bad Children. In a series of short stories, later collected in the books Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, she presented a fictionalized version of her marriage and the experience of bringing up four children. These stories pioneered the "true-to-life funny-housewife stories" of the type later popularized by such writers as Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck during the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep at the age of 48. Shirley suffered throughout her life from various neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses. These ailments, along with the various prescription drugs used to treat them, may have contributed to her declining health and early death. However, at the time of her death, Jackson was overweight and a heavy smoker. After her death, her husband released a posthumous volume of her work, Come Along With Me, containing several chapters of her unfinished last novel as well as several rare short stories (among them "Louisa, Please Come Home") and three speeches given by Jackson in her writing seminars.

With information for Jackson's debut novel, The Road Through the Wall (1948), he described Jackson as someone who practiced witchcraft. Hyman believed this image of Jackson would help promote sales of novels and film rights. She later wrote about witchcraft accusations in her book for young readers, The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956).

Her other novels include Hangsaman (1951), The Bird's Nest (1954), The Sundial (1958) and The Haunting of Hill House (1959), regarded by many, including Stephen King, as one of the important horror novels of the 20th Century. This contemporary updating of the classic ghost story has a vivid and powerful opening paragraph:

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Adaptations
In addition to radio, TV and theater adaptations, "The Lottery" has been filmed three times, most notably in 1969 as an acclaimed short film which director Larry Yust made for an Encyclopædia Britannica educational film series. The Academic Film Archive cited Yust's short "as one of the two bestselling educational films ever".[6]

Eleanor Parker starred in Hugo Haas' Lizzie (1957), based on The Bird's Nest, with a cast that included Richard Boone, Joan Blondell, Marion Ross and Johnny Mathis.
The Haunting of Hill House was adapted to film in 1963 with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom. Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones headed the cast of a 1999 remake.
Jackson's 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle was adapted for the stage by Hugh Wheeler in the mid-1960s. Directed by Garson Kanin and starring Shirley Knight, it opened on Broadway October 19, 1966. The David Merrick production closed after only nine performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, but Wheeler's play continues to be staged by regional theater companies.
Joanne Woodward directed Come Along with Me (1982), adapted from Jackson's unfinished novel, with a cast headed by Estelle Parsons and Sylvia Sidney.

Deathday: Thomas Gray 1716-1771 Graveyard Poet

Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.

Early life and education

Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London, the son of an exchange broker and a milliner. He was the fifth of 12 children and the only child in his family to survive infancy. He lived with his mother after she left his abusive father. He was educated at Eton College where his uncle was one of the masters. He recalled his schooldays as a time of great happiness, as is evident in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Gray was a delicate and naturally scholarly boy who spent his time reading great literature and avoiding athletics. It was probably fortunate for the young and sensitive Gray that he was able to live in his uncle’s household rather than at college. He made three close friends at Eton: Horace Walpole, son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West. The four of them prided themselves on their sense of style, their sense of humour, and their appreciation of beauty.

In 1734 Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge.[1] He found the curriculum dull. He wrote letters to his friends listing all the things he disliked: the masters ("mad with Pride") and the Fellows ("sleepy, drunken, dull, illiterate Things.") Supposedly he was intended for the law, but in fact he spent his time as an undergraduate reading classical and modern literature and playing Vivaldi and Scarlatti on the harpsichord for relaxation. In 1738 he accompanied his old school-friend Walpole on his Grand Tour, probably at Walpole's expense. They fell out and parted in Tuscany because Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities. However, they were reconciled a few years later. Then, he wished his poems would become more popular.

Writing and academia

He began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a self-imposed programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time, though he claimed to be lazy by inclination. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College, Cambridge. It is said that the change of college was the result of a practical joke. Terrified of fire, he had installed a metal bar by his window on the top floor of the Burrough’s building at Peterhouse, so that in the event of a fire he could tie his sheets to it and climb to safety.

Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his collected works published during his lifetime amount to fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the predominant poetic figure of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused.

In 1762, the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of £400, fell vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, and Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to secure the position for him. In the event, Gray lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he secured the position in 1768 after Brockett's death.[2]

Gray was so self critical and fearful of failure that he only published thirteen poems during his lifetime and once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea". Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humour."

Gray was also known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray most likely knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality and sublimity of death.

"Elegy" masterpiece

It is believed that Gray wrote his masterpiece, the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature. Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired, and it was pirated, imitated, quoted and translated into Latin and Greek. It is still one of the most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English language. In 1759 during the Seven Years War, before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, British General James Wolfe is said to have recited it to his officers, adding: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow". The poem's famous depiction of an "ivy-mantled tow'r" could be a reference to the early-mideval St. Laurence's Church in Upton, Slough.

The Elegy was recognised immediately for its beauty and skill. It contains many outstanding phrases which have entered the common English lexicon, either on their own or as referenced in other works. A few of these include:

"The paths of glory"
"Celestial fire"
"Some mute inglorious Milton"
"Far from the madding crowd"
"The unlettered muse"
"Kindred spirit"

Gray also wrote light verse, such as Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, a mock elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat. After setting the scene with the couplet "What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?", the poem moves to its multiple proverbial conclusion: "a fav'rite has no friend," "[k]now one false step is ne'er retrieved" and "nor all that glisters, gold." (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase on a pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill.) Gray’s surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour. He is also well known for his phrase,

"where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,"

-- Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)

Forms

Gray himself considered his two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, his best works. Pindaric odes are written with great fire and passion, unlike the calmer and more reflective Horatian odes such as Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College. The Bard tells of a wild Welsh poet cursing Edward I after the conquest of Wales and prophesying in detail the downfall of the House of Plantagenet. It is very melodramatic, and ends with the bard hurling himself to his death from the top of a mountain.

When his duties allowed, Gray travelled widely throughout Britain to places like Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Scotland in search of picturesque scenery and ancient monuments. These things were not generally valued in the early 18th century, when the popular taste ran to classical styles in architecture and literature and people liked their scenery tame and well-tended. Some people have seen Gray’s writings on this topic, and the Gothic details that appear in his Elegy and The Bard as the first foreshadowing of the Romantic movement that dominated the early 19th century, when William Wordsworth and the other Lake poets had taught people to value the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic. Gray combined traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression and may be considered as a classically focussed precursor of the romantic revival.

Gray's connection to the Romantic poets is vexed. In the prefaces to the 1800 and 1802 editions of Wordsworths' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth singled out Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West" to exemplify what he found most objectionable in poetry, declaring it was "Gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction."[3] Indeed, it was Gray who had written, in a letter to West, that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry."[4]

Death

Gray died on 30 July 1771 in Cambridge and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, the setting for his famous Elegy. His grave can still be seen there. There is a plaque in Cornhill, marking his birthplace.

References

1.^ Thomas Gray in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2.^ Edmund William Gosse, Gray (London: Macmillan, 1902), p. 133 at books.google.com
3.^ Abrams, M.H. et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2, Fourth Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979, p.167
4.^ ibid.