|  | Massacre Island | |  | | Massacre Island | | Twelve-year-old Nicolas de La Salle and his family sailed to La Louisiane (French Louisiana) with Governor Iberville to start a French settlement on the Gulf coast. Nicolas's father was with the explorer, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, when he reached ... | | | $17.95 | |  |
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| | | ADULT | Home » » A Halloween Reader: Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloween Past | | | | | | | Description: | | This anthology contains the works of writers from the 16th to the early 20th centuries who evoke the night to set a scene, twist a plot, or explain something inexplicable, like madness or time travel. | | | Product Details: | | | Paperback:
| 272 pages | | Publisher:
| Pelican Publishing | | Publication Date:
| September 30, 2004 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1589801768 | | Package Length:
| 8.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 4.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.1 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 4 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Old tyme Halloween loreNov 11, 2008
This book contains plenty of traditional tales of Halloween in England, Ireland and Scotland. I was looking for something of this nature to satisfy my own curiousity and this was it. However the stories and poems are not for younger children. I was hoping to read some things to my children 7 and 9 and most of it was too wordy or had adult themes. But for older kids and adults - it gives the 'old country' superstitions and tales that make Halloween.... well...spooky!
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful Addition to One's Halloween LibraryOct 16, 2007
This was such a pleasant surprise, actually better than I'd expected. I have many books in my Halloween collection describing Halloween's origins and the way in which we Americans appropriated this holiday from the British Isles and its evolution through the Victorian-era's fall-themed sort of Valentine's Day. But until recently, I've had few accounts actually drawn from the time period. Most are contemporary pieces looking back upon that bygone era.
But this compendium includes stories and other literary works drawn from the era itself. Some are chilling, some are murky, and some are comedic. I particularly liked 1896's "Hallowe'en Party," by Caroline Ticknor, amusing! How often does one run across plays (parlor dramas as they are described) written specifically for Halloween? ("By Cupid's Trick,"Griffith Wilde, 1885) There are even newspaper excerpts describing events that took place on Halloween. (November 2, 1900, 'New York Times')
Overall the book was a treasure to read, and unique in my collection. I encourage all Halloween enthusiasts to add this to their library for a wonderful, historical snapshot of one of the most enjoyable holidays on the calendar.
35 of 36 found the following review helpful:
Night In The Lonesome October: Olde Halloween RevisitedOct 15, 2004
Lesley Pratt Bannatyne has provided Halloween enthusiasts, folklorists, educators, concerned parents, and the general reader a great service with A Halloween Reader (2004), a vintage compilation of aesthetically agreeable poems, short stories, and play fragments about Samhain, Halloween, All Saint's Day, and All Soul's Day.
Though a specter with vampiric tendencies does appear in one story (1883's "Ken's Mystery" by Julian Hawthorne) and a women is frightened to death in another, the emphasis throughout is on the aesthetic tone of each selection, something generally lost in Halloween stories of the present day, which are either unthreatening, unimaginative pabulum for children free of all historical association or revolting, gore - strewn horror stories composed for adult audiences. As the author states in her introduction, "This is not a horror anthology, though horror may be found here." Throughout, the writing, by both well - known and obscure authors, is excellent, and authenticity, mystery, a foreboding atmosphere, imagination, and a sense of wonder are the volume's touchstones; strict morbidity is kept at a minimum.
An "earthly knight" becomes a prisoner of fairyland in the traditional ballad "Tam Lin," a man finds himself traveling through a "ghoul - haunted woodland" to his beloved's tomb in Poe's hallucinated "Ulalume" (1847), witches and devils invade a country cottage in Patrick Kennedy's "Black Stairs On Fire" (1866), beautiful and ugly examples of "the good people" kidnap a straying youth in Le Fanu's eerie "The Child That Went With the Fairies" (1870), an elfin being tricks the title character into a game of cards in Yeats's "Red Hanrahan" (1904), a dead man, who is nonetheless "dying of thirst," seeks assistance in James Stephen's "The Feast of Samhain" (1924), and frustrated lovers fall victim to an evil magician in the anonymously written "The Fiend's Field: A Legend of the Wrekin" (1832). In Caroline Ticknor's humorous "A Hallowe'en Party" (1896), an anxious New Yorker recalls a calamitous evening at a riotous suburban soiree. Though nothing by Washington Irving is included, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Winkle" (both 1820), and "The Devil and Tom Walker" (1824), autumnal pieces all, would have been worthy inclusions, as would Nathaniel Hawthorne's light - hearted "Feathertop: A Moralized Legend" (1846), with its clever, crone - like witch and sentient scarecrow.
The volume also features a short seasonal miscellany, including an account of the Scottish practice of "Cabbage Thumping" (1835), "The Method of Making a Magic Staff" (1985), which is drawn from a medieval Latin manuscript, "On Preparing A Corpse in Ireland" (1895), an oral report of man's experience with the will - o' - the -wisp in "Jack O Lantern Lights" (1938), and a 1907 New York Times article concerning five women who spent 36 hours lost in a swamp after becoming lost on their way to a Halloween party.
Though man's mortality, a belief in an afterlife, and the cycle of nature are genuine aspects of Samhain and Halloween in a wide variety of ways, true Halloween has nothing to do with devil worship, zombies, serial killers, murder, torture, dismemberment, poisoning, cannibalism, car accidents, or any of the other grim, visceral elements presently exploited by the media in the holiday's name. A Halloween Reader returns the focus of October 31st to the liminal and the otherworldly without sacrificing its hypnotic, twilit fascination.
35 of 35 found the following review helpful:
For Halloween LoversOct 09, 2004
What's amazing is that the stories and poems that are 100, 200, even 400 years old are as emotionally engaging and/or creepy as ones written today. Although this is not a collection of horror, it's got some teeth. Reading the whole thing through gives you a sense of what Halloween was to generations before us, and you end up understanding what a deep cultural place it holds. The book starts Celtic (including a poem about a complaining corpse that won't die), goes through some pre-Victorian and Victorian (including an elegant vampire story) pieces, some funny, some unsettling, through the famous 19th and early 20th century authors (Lovecraft, Poe, Wharton, Yeats, Joyce) and ends with a section called "Hallowoddities," which includes items like "how to prepare a corpse for burial" (don't pin the feet together) or "Five Ladies Lost in Swamp Looking for Halloween Greenery," (they all lived) from an old New York Times. The author even includes witch trial testimony and a bit from a colonial-era play that mentions Halloween for those interested in the historical side. The introduction puts all the literature in context. This is a real find for the Halloween lover.
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