American Gothic: An Anthology from Salem Witchcraft to H. P. Lovecraft

The chilling creativity of the American Gothic has retained its power to attract readers since it burst onto the literary scene in the eighteenth century, yet it has been the object of serious scholarship for only a few decades. Edited by a founding member of the International Gothic Association, the new edition of this anthology incorporates the whole range of factual and imaginative writing, from Cotton Mather’s account of the witchcraft trials in the colonial era, through the poetry of Poe, Dickinson, and Longfellow and unsettling tales both long (Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw )and short (the anonymous “Talking Bones”), to the beginning of modernism in the twentieth century. The collection demonstrates the startling abundance of themes explored by these writers and reflects contemporary academic perspectives, with generous selections from genres such as feminist and “wilderness” Gothic. This new edition benefits from more than ten years of suggestions from readers and teachers while still offering prose and poetry from luminaries such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Edith Wharton. It includes recently unearthed as well as canonical material and provides an unflinching view of America’s secrets and fears: the thoughts that have been repressed, silenced, or forbidden. All editorial materials have been revised for this new edition, which includes brand–new selections such as the captivity narrative of Hannah Dustan, Madeline Yale Wynne’s “The Little Room,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider.”

List of Authors x Chronology xi Thematic Table of Contents xv Preface to the Second Edition xxviii Editorial Principles xxix Acknowledgments xxx Introduction 1 Cotton Mather (1663–1728) 3 “The Tryal of G. B.” 4 “The Trial of Martha Carrier” 8 A Notable Exploit; wherein , Dux Faemina Facti [The Narrative of Hannah Dustan] 10 “ Abraham Panther” 12 A surprising account of the Discovery of a Lady … 12 J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813) 16 from Letters from an American Farmer : “Letter IX” 16 Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) 24 “Somnambulism: A Fragment” 24 Washington Irving (1783–1859) 36 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 36 John Neal (1793–1876) 55 “Idiosyncrasies” 55 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) 73 “Alice Doane ’ s Appeal” 74 “Young Goodman Brown” 80 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) 89 “The Skeleton in Armor” 89 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) 94 “Hop–Frog” 94 “The Cask of Amontillado” 100 “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” 104 “The Fall of the House of Usher” 110 Five Poems 121 “The Raven” 121 “The City in the Sea” 124 “Ulalume” 125 “Annabel Lee” 127 “Dream–Land” 128 Herman Melville (1819–1891) 131 “The Bell–Tower” 131 George Lippard (1822–1854) 141 from The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall 141 Henry Clay Lewis (1825–1850) 146 “A Struggle for Life” 146 Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892) 152 “My Visitation” 152 Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) 164 Eight Poems 164 F 43 “Through lane it lay – thro’ bramble –” 164 F 340 “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” 165 F 341 “ ’ Tis so appalling – it exhilarates –” 165 F 360 “The Soul has Bandaged moments –” 166 F 407 “One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted –” 166 F 425 “ ’ Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch” 167 F 431 “If I may have it, when it ’ s dead,” 167 F 1433 “What mystery pervades a well!” 168 Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) 170 “A Whisper in the Dark” 170 Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) 194 “Her Story” 194 “Circumstance” 206 Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?) 215 “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” 215 “The Death of Halpin Frayser” 217 Henry James (1843–1916) 227 The Turn of the Screw 227 George Washington Cable (1844–1925) 290 “Jean–Ah Poquelin” 290 Madeline Yale Wynne (1847–1918) 304 “The Little Room” 304 Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) 312 “The Foreigner” 312 Kate Chopin (1851–1904) 328 “Désirée ’ s Baby” 328 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) 333 “Old Woman Magoun” 333 “Luella Miller” 344 Gertrude Atherton (1857–1948) 353 “The Bell in the Fog” 353 Anonymous (Folk Tale) 367 “Talking Bones” 367 Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) 368 “The Dumb Witness” 369 “The Sheriff ’ s Children” 376 Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) 387 “The Giant Wisteria” 387 “The Yellow Wall–Paper” 392 Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862–1935) 403 “The House That Was Not” 403 Edith Wharton (1862–1937) 406 “The Eyes” 406 Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933) 419 “In the Court of the Dragon” 419 Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) 425 Two Poems 425 “Nancy Knapp” 425 “Barry Holden” 425 Edwin Arlington Robinson (1868–1935) 427 Six Poems 427 “Luke Havergal” 427 “Lisette and Eileen” 428 “The Dark House” 429 “The Mill” 430 “Souvenir” 431 “Why He Was There” 431 Frank Norris (1870–1902) 432 “Lauth” 432 Stephen Crane (1871–1900) 449 “The Monster” 449 Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) 483 “The Lynching of Jube Benson” 483 Alexander Posey (1873–1908) 488 “Chinnubbie and the Owl” 488 Jack London (1876–1916) 492 “Samuel” 492 H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft (1890–1937) 505 “The Outsider” 505 Select Bibliography 510 Index of Titles and First Lines 513 Index to the Introductions and Footnotes 515

Charles L. Crow is Professor Emeritus of English at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, USA, and has been a visiting scholar or lecturer at universities in Austria, the Czech Republic, China, and Croatia. He edited the first edition of this volume for Blackwell in 1999 and has written monographs and articles on several nineteenth– and twentieth–century American writers. A founding member of the International Gothic Association, he is also editor of A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America (Wiley–Blackwell, 2003).

“One of the main strengths of this collection lies in  the fact that it places alongside the intelligent selection of extracts from authors already rightly well associated with the genre contributions from lesser known  figures such as George Lippard. John Neal, Charles W. Chestnutt, and Cotton Mather, to name but a few. The edition also benefits greatly from a much greater acknowledgement of the traditionally underlooked contributions to the genre made by female authors… The anthology′s thoughtful selection of texts and authors, and useful, practical, scholarly apparatus mean that it should be an immensely useful resource for anyone teaching on courses related to this ever–expanding and influential subsection of American literary studies.”— Bernice Murphy, Trinity College Dublin