![]() Though written in the early part of the 20th century, almost all the stories are set sometime in the late 17th to mid 18th century - like Broster, Bowen was a historical novelist. I can’t believe I read that! What a trip…. I’d look up from the book, and think, Wow, I can’t believe she wrote that. This isn’t usually my thing, but many of the tales left me oddly exhilarated on finishing them. In fact, Bowen’s stories remind me of 1960s-70s gothic horror in many ways. If Broster’s tales are the short story equivalent of the Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bowen’s are more like that old 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows - in sensibility, if not exactly in subject matter. I’d call them over-the-top, but having read actual early gothic literature, I’d have to say that Bowen’s stories are restrained, compared to the real thing. ![]() They are very much in the spirit of late 18th and early 19th century gothic fiction. ![]() The tales in The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories are sensational, pulpy, almost lurid, and occasionally melodramatic. Walled-in women, “ruined” women, poisoning, strangulation, stabbing, crimes of passion and revenge, even a strange fish monster. ![]() This is the second of two reviews of Wordsworth collections by women horror writers I’d never read before. ![]()
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