Book Review: "A Phantom Lover" ed. by Mike Ashley

Full Title: A Phantom Lover: and Other Dark Tales by Vernon Lee edited by Mike Ashley

The series entitled The British Library's Tales of the Weird has seemed to encapture my thoughts for the present and, as I write this I am already researching which ones are set to come out soon. I am happy to announce that there are many very interesting ones in the coming months that are making me extremely excited with anticipation for truly frightening horror stories. This one, entitled A Phantom Lover: and Other Dark Tales by Vernon Lee has really amazed me with its ability to be both haunting and thought-provoking at the same time.

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym for Violet Paget. Born in France in 1856, she was commonly known to be very intelligent and her weird stories have lasted down the ages. Be that as it may, Paget was more into writing essays about art and literature than she was writing her scarier and more haunting works. She was a great appreciator of the aesthetic movement of the 19th century and made good friends with the writer Henry James. Spending her time on the continent, she was a pacifist and an anti-military woman who was a member of an organisation called 'The Union of Democratic Control". She was also openly against World War One.

She passed away in 1935 at the age of 78. Her works were rediscovered (after her ostracisation for her World War One opposition) in the 1990s via the feminist movement. Now, I am discovering them as well and I am quite excited as they are all so interesting. Depicting many of her passions and subject areas, this text is not only haunting but they serve as a testament to the author's great artistic influence.

The Enchanted Woods was an essay I absolutely adored because of its raw emotion, raw imagination and haunting yet universal quality. It imagines that an enchanted forest could possibly exist anywhere at all and is entirely dependent on the author and reader having experiences and emotions to respond to it. It's great for putting the reader into the emotion and mind to reader these seven strange stories that are to follow.

One of the stories that really stood out to me was the first real story in the anthology called Winthrop's Adventure. It is about a man who becomes obsessed with a picture of a singer holding some sheet music. As we see common themes of art, literature, obsession and love unfold as the aesthetic movement's greatest ideas and concentrations, we also see the appreciation of art from Vernon Lee herself flutter through into the story's beating heart. The dense descriptions, the increased atmosphere and the lengthy imagery that goes on in the story only makes it more hypnotic for the reader - leading us down the road to obsession ourselves.

The titular story, A Phantom Lover, is perhaps the best known in the anthology and for good reason. It is a thrilling narrative filled with obsession which definitely reflects the fin-de-siècle* it exists within. The decadence and intrigue also make for wonderful additions, fitting in well within and deep into the genre. A painter agrees to a paint a portrait of a man and his wife, thinking they are simple people. When arriving at their home, he is immediately obsessed with it and obsessed with the lady of the house. The lady of the house, named Alice, has secrets of her own though and everything is going from bad to worse as more and more are discovered about the strange couple.

The other stories are just as great as these, but I will leave you to discover the rest. It is a brilliant introduction to Vernon Lee's works for newcomers and, for you and I it is a brilliant addition to our librarys which compiles her most well-written works of the weird. I think a lot of thought has gone into this anthology and I'm glad the British Library chose her to compile a book on.

Notes:

*fin-de-siècle = meaning 'end of the century' it is categorised by writing at the end of the 19th century that had characteristics of dark obsessions and decadence. For more information about this sub-genre, take a look at the Britannica article on the topic