A series overview
Having previously read and reviewed the Stories by American Authors series and the Stories by Foreign Authors series, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1884 and 1898, respectively, I decided to tackle their 1896 series Stories by English Authors. Once again, Scribner's offers a ten-volume set, each volume of which contains five to seven short stories or novellas. Contrary to the series title, not all the authors are English—some hail from Scotland, Ireland, or Wales. A proper name would have been Stories by British Authors. The ten volumes contain a total of 60 stories by 54 authors (several are listed as Anonymous). As far as I can tell from the free ebook versions, the volumes are not numbered. Each book is subtitled according to the country or region where its stories are set. I have previously reviewed all ten volumes individually here at Old Books by Dead Guys, in the following order. Click on the links below to read the complete reviews.
Stories by English Authors: England
Stories by English Authors: London
Stories by English Authors: Ireland
Stories by English Authors: Scotland
Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
Stories by English Authors: The Sea
Stories by English Authors: Africa
Stories by English Authors: France
Stories by English Authors: Italy
Stories by English Authors: The Orient
In many cases, the stories feature English protagonists in the various locales, though sometimes the authors write stories with “native" characters, in an attempt to illustrate the local customs and character of the setting in question. Sometimes the stories in this latter category take the form of harmless folktales, but often they can come across as condescending or racist towards the cultures they’re depicting. The worst volume in the series is The Orient, which manages to offend half the peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Ireland volume, though written entirely by Irish writers, paints a dismal picture of the Emerald Isle as a land of drinking, fighting rednecks. Surprisingly, the Africa volume is one of the better books in the series, because it mostly ignores Africans altogether and focuses more on English adventurers launching expeditions into the Dark Continent. The best volume of the ten is the one on Germany, and Northern Europe, largely due to superb entries by Robert Louis Stevenson and Ouida.
These books are in the public domain and can be read online and downloaded for free at various sources, including Amazon and Project Gutenberg. I read the Stories by Foreign Authors series first and was very impressed by it. It contains a lot of great stories by some of the most renowned writers in 19th-century European fiction, as well as other lesser-known authors that prove to be pleasant surprises. Following that with the Stories by American Authors series was a big disappointment. Most of the authors included there have since rightfully faded into obscurity, and their offerings are mostly mediocre. Overall, the Stories by English Authors series proved to be even slightly worse than the American series, and nowhere near the quality of the Foreign series. Like its American counterpart, the English series is also heavy on the obscure and the mediocre, though it is occasionally redeemed by the presence of a heavy hitter like Stevenson, Ouida, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or H. Rider Haggard. As often as not, however, the big name authors deliver lackluster selections, as is the case with Anthony Trollope, Rudyard Kipling, Wilkie Collins, and others.
I highlight the best stories in the series below, as I have done with the American and Foreign series. I tried for a top ten list, but could only come up with nine, and that was being charitable. I have rated each of these stories from five to four stars, and they are listed in descending order of merit.
“Markheim” by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
On Christmas night, a lone customer enters an antique dealer’s shop with robbery and murder on his mind. Reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe, Stevens focuses on the psychological state of the killer. The story takes a very unexpected turn and becomes a riveting philosophical thriller.
“A Dog of Flanders” by Ouida
from Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
A boy and his grandfather, poor as beggars but happy, live in a village outside Antwerp. One day they find an injured dog who becomes the boy’s inseparable friend. A great story, though melodramatic at times. Longer than it needs to be, but the ending is worth it.
“A Leaf in the Storm” by Ouida
from Stories by English Authors: France
In a picturesque village on the banks of the Seine, a 92-year-old woman lives a peaceful life with her grandson. Life is good until the reality of the Franco-Prussian War descends upon their sleepy hamlet. Depressing, but reminiscent of Emile Zola with its brutal realism.
“The Four-Fifteen Express” by Amelia B. Edwards
from Stories by English Authors: England
On a train ride to his friend’s country estate, a man meets a mutual acquaintance of his host. When discussing the encounter with his friend, however, he discovers that the mysterious passenger has been on the lam for embezzlement. The two friends investigate, and a good mystery story ensues.
“Long Odds” by H. Rider Haggard
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
Aging adventurer Allan Quartermain tells the story of how a family of lions killed his oxen, and how he hunted them down for retribution. A fun and exciting hunting story with good descriptive passages and just enough local color.
“An Idyl of London” by Beatrice Harraden
from Stories by English Authors: London
Two art students, an old man and a young woman, form an unlikely friendship while copying paintings at the National Gallery of Art. The ending is handled somewhat clumsily, but overall the story is quite touching.
“Ghamba” by William Charles Scully
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
A young white man in South Africa strikes up a friendship with a rather creepy old native named Ghamba, who tells his new friend about a criminal hiding out in a cave in the mountains. Turns into a pretty good and violently fun pulp fiction tale.
“Quarantine Island” by Sir Walter Besant
from Stories by English Authors: The Sea
Spurned by his beloved, a young doctor volunteers to serve on an isolated island where ship passengers are quarantined before being allowed on the mainland. It follows a familiar formula, but the details are well written.
“King Bemba’s Point” by J. Landers
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
A young Englishman goes to work as assistant to the factor at a southeast African trading post. When a visitor arrives from England the assistant suspects that he and the boss share a mysterious prior history. Predictable, but otherwise well executed.
That’s it for Scribner’s short story series. Next, I am moving on to the three-volume set International Short Stories, published by P. F. Collier & Son in 1910. Its three books focus on American, English, and French fiction.
Myopic British views of Asia
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| Rudyard Kipling |
This is the tenth volume I’ve read in the ten-volume series Stories by English Authors, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. Subtitled The Orient, this book collects six short stories set in Asia and Australia. From the free ebook editions available online, the volumes in the Stories by English Authors series don’t appear to be numbered, so I’ve just been reading them in random order. I will confess, however, that I’ve avoided The Orient volume until the end, in anticipation of what antiquated 19th century notions of racism and colonialism might lie within. It turns out that for the most part my concerns were well-founded, and most of these stories just haven’t stood up well to the test of time.
The book opens with Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Man Who Would Be King,” perhaps best known today as the basis for a movie adaptation starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Two English vagabonds in India decide to assume the kingship of a secluded tribe of natives. I’ve never been a big fan of Kipling’s writing, and this offering did nothing to convert me. He crams his stories with so much gratuitous local color and slang that the atmosphere becomes more important than the narrative and the prose becomes almost unintelligible. This one suffers from its white-conquerors-over-dumb-natives premise and its rather silly climax.
Next up, “Tajima” by “Miss Mitford” (likely Mary Russell Mitford) is a fable about a ronin, or masterless samurai. All the characters are Japanese, and Mitford treats them respectfully. The story is just OK, its biggest offense being dullness. The best story in the book, which isn’t saying much, is “A Chinese Girl Graduate” by R. K. Douglas. Set in China, it’s about a girl who masquerades as a boy in order to study with male scholars. Imagine if Pearl S. Buck wrote Yentl. There’s a lot of gender-bending disguise along the lines of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Though it defies belief, it’s pretty good as far as fluffy romances go.
It’s all downhill from there. Set in New Zealand, Mary Beaumont’s “The Revenge of Her Race” is a tale of interracial marriage between an Englishman and a Maori woman. Though Beaumont likely thought she was being sympathetic to the indigenous, the story is anything but enlightened, since it’s all about how this native woman hates herself because she’s not white. Morley Roberts’s story “King Billy of Ballarat” is a Kiplingesque accent fest about an Australian aborigine who befriends a young white girl in order to beg for her father’s hand-me-down clothing. The “black fellow” (as he’s referred to in the story) is portrayed as a drunken buffoon, and the prose is so inarticulate I couldn’t even figure out the ending. Lastly, Netta Styrett’s “Thy Heart’s Desire” is a dreary soap opera about a British couple with marital problems. Since its only connection to the East is one use of the word “Persian,” it’s difficult to see why this story is even included in this collection. It’s hard to believe that these dismal entries were the best examples of “Oriental” English fiction that the editor could come up with.
Overall the Stories by English Authors series has been a disappointment, and I am glad to be done with it. This particular volume on The Orient is the worst of the bunch. For those who enjoy 19th century fiction and are looking for good short story collections, I would recommend Scribner’s later series from 1898, Stories by Foreign Authors, which features some of the best writers from various nations in Europe.
Stories in this collection
The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling
Tajima by Miss Mitford
A Chinese Girl Graduate by R. K. Douglas
The Revenge of Her Race by Mary Beaumont
King Billy of Ballarat by Morley Roberts
Thy Heart’s Desire by Nyetta Styrett
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Manages to make Rome, Venice, and Florence seem dull
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| Laurence Oliphant |
This book of short stories is one of ten volumes in the Stories by English Authors series that was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. The five stories included here all take place in Italy, hence the subtitle of this particular volume. In Western civilizations, Italy was traditionally viewed as the world’s wellspring of art, literature, and culture, at least until the late 19th century when it may have been supplanted or at least matched by Paris. Anyone with money or artistic talent was expected to make a pilgrimage to Rome, Florence, and Venice at some point in their lives, and the characters of these stories are no exception. These five works of short fiction are all tales of Brits in Italy. If you’re a lover of Italy yourself you’re unlikely to find much satisfaction here. These stories give very little insight into Italy’s ambience or culture, and are for the most part rather annoying in their concentration on rich people’s petty problems. The characters show little affinity for the country in which they happen to be traveling. Through their eyes it is merely a box on their bucket lists that needs to be checked off.
The book opens with “A Faithful Retainer” by James Payn, in which a rich young Englishman is sent to Italy to get over his gambling vice. This is a boring and predictable piece, with a very thin plot dressed up with weak humor. “Bianca” by W. E. Norris is about a Brit in Venice who’s friendship with an Austrian officer obligates him to assist in the fellow’s elopement with an Italian mistress. In A. Mary F. Robinson’s “Goneril” we find a young woman with the unfortunate name of Gonerilla enjoying an extended sojourn in Florence, where she makes the acquaintance of an older gentleman who takes an interest in her. These first three offerings are all rather formulaic and dull. Italy merely serves as a backdrop for stories that could just as well have been told in England, and in fact have been told many times before by other and better authors.
The best entry in the book, and that’s not saying much, is “The Brigand’s Bride” by Laurence Oliphant. It’s about an English adventurer who goes to Italy seeking excitement and gets involved in the country’s ongoing civil war. He winds up falling in love with the wife of the leader of one of the bandit gangs he’s been commissioned to suppress. This is an amusing romantic tale, but a little slow in pace and longer than it needs to be.
Even Anthony Trollope can’t save this collection. His “Mrs. General Talboys” concerns an Englishwoman who travels to Rome with her daughter, leaving her husband behind. Though she is faithful to her spouse, to others she is vocal in her advocacy of freedom from the conventions of matrimony, an attitude that inadvertently wins her a suitor. The piece is well drawn by Trollope, but he treats his own heroine with such mean-spiritedness you never really care about the characters, and the overall effect is unpleasant.
This is the ninth volume I have read in the Stories by English Authors series, and this book on Italy can rightfully vie with the one on Ireland for worst volume in the series. The only story worth reading is Oliphant’s, and I can only give that one a halfhearted endorsement. In general the series has been a rather lackluster showcase of late 19th-century British fiction, but two volumes, one on Africa and the other on Germany and Northern Europe, are pretty good and worth a look.
Stories in this collection
A Faithful Retainer by James Payn
Bianca by W. E. Norris
Goneril by A. Mary F. Robinson
The Brigand’s Bride: A Tale of Southern Italy by Laurence Oliphant
Mrs. General Talboys by Anthony Trollope
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Oui to Ouida, but otherwise ennui
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| Ouida |
This book is part of the Stories by English Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. The ten volumes in the series don’t appear to have any particular order, and each is simply subtitled according to the setting of the stories included. This book of five short stories set in France is the eighth volume I’ve reviewed in the series, after having previously read the collections on England, London, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Northern Europe, Africa, and The Sea. So far I haven’t been terribly impressed by the series overall. This France volume is middle-of-the-road for the series, and of mediocre quality compared to literature in general.
You would think that leading off with a heavy hitter like Robert Louis Stevenson would start the book on a high note, but “A Lodging for the Night” is not one of his better stories. The narrative takes place in Paris in 1456. A poet passes a cold winter’s evening in a seedy tavern with his gang of friends, all thieves and murderers. Stevenson devotes much of the story’s length to its medieval atmosphere and the witty verbal repartee among the brigands; so much so that the plot is almost an afterthought. That’s a shame because it does get rather interesting toward the end, but by then it’s a little too little, a little too late.
The second entry by Ouida, the pseudonym of Maria Louis Ramé, is far more successful. She has been one of the bright spots in this series, having also provided the great story “A Dog of Flanders” to the Germany and Northern Europe volume. In this France collection, her story “A Leaf in the Storm” is set in a picturesque village on the banks of the Seine, where a 92-year-old woman and her grandson enjoy their simple lives, until the peace of their sleepy hamlet is interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. Here Ouida’s writing calls to mind the war narratives of Emile Zola in both its brutal pessimism and its compelling emotional power.
Next up, another well-known British author, Wilkie Collins, offers a story of an Englishman traveling in Paris. This one ventures into the territory of horror and mystery. It builds suspense based on a premise that is quite clever but unrealistic. The narrative has an extended prologue, almost as long as the story itself, narrated by an itinerant portrait painter who explains how this tale was related to him during a portrait sitting. The story doesn’t benefit from this protracted setup.
The last two entries, by lesser-known authors, are the worst selections in the book. “Michel Lorio’s Cross,” by Hesba Stretton, is set in the stunning seaside city of Mont St-Michel in Normandy. The hero, one of the town’s native sons, is shunned by his neighbors for having converted to Protestantism. Though ostensibly a religious fable, Stretton uses the schmaltzy tale to portray French Catholics as intolerant and illiterate. The book’s final selection, S. J. Weyman’s “A Perilous Amour,” is set around 1600 and involves a plot to assassinate King Henry IV of France. The story is such a confusing mess, however, little joy is derived from the political intrigue.
This book serves its purpose in the Stories by English Authors series, but France has such a rich literature of its own, why bother reading a bunch of Brits’ takes on the country? In fact, another Scribner’s series, Stories by Foreign Authors, published in 1898, has three volumes of French short stories that are all far superior to this collection.
Stories in this collection
A Lodging for the Night by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Leaf in the Storm by Ouida
The Traveller’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins
Michel Lorio’s Cross by Hesba Stretton
A Perilous Amour by S. J. Weyman
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A pretty good collection of adventure fiction
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| H. Rider Haggard |
This is the seventh book I’ve read and reviewed in the ten-volume Stories by English Authors series, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. As the one-word subtitle of this volume indicates, all the stories included here are set in Africa. Before starting the book, I was worried I might be in for a lot of Dark Continent clichés and racial stereotypes, but for the most part my misgivings were unfounded. If anything, the natives suffer more from neglect than insult, as almost all the main characters in these stories are British. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the exotic locale, this collection is more focused on adventure fiction than the other volumes in this series, and that works to its advantage. This Africa volume is one of the best books that I’ve encountered yet in the Stories by English Authors series, perhaps second only to the volume on Germany and Northern Europe.
When you’re putting together a collection of short stories, you can’t ask for a much better lead-off hitter than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” may not be one of his best efforts, but it’s still a cut above the usual fare one encounters in this series. Two British friends, down on their luck in South Africa, hear a legend about a demon with glowing eyes and decide to investigate. Conan Doyle is a master storyteller, even when the story is pretty thin, and this one certainly is. Faring better is another classic author of African adventure, H. Rider Haggard. His story “Long Odds” stars Allan Quartermain, the hero from King Solomon’s Mines. The aging adventurer relates a story of how he hunted down a family of lions as retribution for their having killed his oxen. This exciting hunting story may defy belief at times, but it’s great fun.
In “King Bemba’s Point” by J. Landers, a young Englishman goes to work as assistant to the factor at a southeast African trading post. This one follows a familiar formula and telegraphs its surprise ending far in advance, but the details are well executed, and it sufficiently entertains. Yet another good entry is William Charles Scully’s “Ghamba.” A young Englishman in South Africa strikes up a friendship with a rather creepy old native named Ghamba, who informs him of the whereabouts of a wanted criminal who is hiding in a mountain cave. The hero enlists his American friend to help him capture the villain for reward money. This story includes violence and elements of horror that push it into pulp fiction territory, making for a fun read.
After four strong entries the collection takes a turn for the worse with “Mary Musgrave,” an anonymous tale of a woman’s effect on a South African mining camp. After that, the final third of the volume is occupied by a twelve chapter novella, Gregorio, by Percy Hemingway. This is an operatic tragedy about a poverty-stricken Greek man in Alexandria, Egypt, who must resort to desperate measures to feed his wife and son. It’s a very engaging and well-structured narrative, but it’s depressingly bleak and far from politically correct in its racial characterizations. It is a work of middling literary quality that inspires mixed emotions.
Overall, the Stories by English Authors series has been disappointing, but this volume is actually pretty good. Anyone interested in vintage adventure fiction, particularly of the African variety, will find its contents decently entertaining.
Stories in this collection
The Mystery of Sasassa Valley by Arthur Conan Doyle
Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard
King Bemba’s Point by J. Landers
Ghamba by William Charles Scully
Mary Musgrave by Anonymous
Gregorio by Percy Hemingway
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As predictable as the tides
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| Walter Besant |
This collection of short fiction is part of the ten-volume Stories by English Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. The unnumbered volumes in the series are subtitled according to the settings of the stories they contain, in this case The Sea. This is the sixth volume I’ve read in the series, which has been of mixed quality thus far.
As I work my way through the series, I didn’t approach this assortment of sea stories with a great deal of optimism. I find that sailing stories generally tend to be jargon-heavy and formulaic. The atmosphere of shipboard life often takes precedence over plot, and for every master of the genre—e.g. Herman Melville, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson—there are a thousand hacks. The table of contents of this volume contains no British authors of Stevenson’s calibre or notoriety. The fact that three of the selections are attributed to “Anonymous” is even less promising.
The three anonymous stories end up being the shortest, most conventional, and least inspiring entries in the book. Two stories of smugglers and slavers, “The Rock Scorpions” and “‘Petrel’ and ‘The Black Swan,’” are so bogged down with nautical slang, foreign accents, and murky prose that the plots are barely intelligible. “Vanderdecken’s Message Home” is a generically spooky telling of a ship’s encounter with the ghostly Flying Dutchman.
Faring a little better, but not much is “The Extraordinary Adventure of a Chief Mate” by W. Clark Russell. A sailor is marooned on a newly born volcanic island, where his adventures are far from extraordinary. After a long, boring wait, nothing much happens. In “The Master of the ‘Chrystolite’” a captain is ready to resign his post for a more lucrative offer when his bosses offer him a huge cash bonus to wreck their ship for the insurance money. This one starts with a pretty good premise, but ends up being predictable and a little slow.
Compared to its two sister series from Scribner’s—Stories by American Authors from 1884 and Stories by Foreign Authors from 1898—the Stories by English Authors series contains an inordinate number of narratives about romance and betrothal. Not even The Sea is immune to this saccharine subject matter. Shockingly, however, one of these stories ends up being the best selection in this volume. In Walter Besant’s “Quarantine Island,” a would-be Romeo is jilted by his beloved, but finds solace in tending the sick on an isolated island that serves as a holding pen for potentially contagious ship passengers. The plot leads to a predictable end, but the getting there is well written. Yet another recurring subtheme in the romance category is the matchmaking story, here represented by Grant Allen’s story “Melissa’s Tour.” An English family is asked to escort a young woman from Kansas City on a transatlantic voyage, and she ends up not being the dumb Yankee country bumpkin they expected. It’s a decent selection, but, being a Kansas Citian, I may be biased.
There’s nothing either terrible or impressive about this volume. It is probably an accurate representation of the mediocre center line of nautical literature in Britain at the end of the 19th century. If you’re a fan of sea stories, you might enjoy this collection, but chances are you’ve read far better works in this genre.
Stories in this collection
The Extraordinary Adventure of a Chief Mate by W. Clark Russell
Quarantine Island by Sir Walter Besant
The Rock Scorpions by Anonymous
The Master of the “Chrystolite” by G. B. O’Halloran
“Petrel” and “The Black Swan” by Anonymous
Melissa’s Tour by Grant Allen
Vanderdecken’s Message Home by Anonymous
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One of the better volumes in this series
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| Robert Louis Stevenson |
This is the fifth book I’ve read in the Stories by English Authors series, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. Each of the ten volumes in the series presents a collection of five or six works of short fiction by British (not necessarily English) authors. Each book highlights stories set in a particular location. In this volume, subtitled Germany, and Northern Europe, the narratives take place in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and of course, Germany. Up to now I haven’t been too impressed with the Stories by English Authors books, but this installment in the series is clearly a cut above the others that I’ve come across so far.
The book opens with Beatrice Harraden’s “The Bird on Its Journey.” A young woman shows up alone at a Swiss resort. Her profession is apparently piano tuner, and she is looked down upon by the high class English tourists. It all leads up to a surprise ending that is no surprise. The story benefits from its likeable female lead, but of course in 19th-century literature she must have a suitor, and the one provided is annoyingly inane. Next up is “Koosje: A Study of Dutch Life,” by John Strange Winter. A Dutch girl in Utrecht finds a starving woman in the street and invites her into her father’s home, a decision that leads to unforeseen consequences. The writing is a bit awkward at times, but the story has warmth, and it’s not entirely predictable. The book closes with “Queen Tita’s Wager,” by William Black, a comic romance about British tourists vacationing in the Black Forest of Germany. A young Brit tries to win the heart of the innkeeper’s daughter. There’s some good humor in this one, but it would have been a lot better if the Romeo you’re supposed to be rooting for weren’t such a snobbish jerk.
While those three stories are all fair to good in quality, it’s the remaining two selections that really make this collection worthwhile. The novella “A Dog of Flanders” by Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée) is a touching tale of love between a boy and his dog. Nello, a young orphan, lives in a village outside of Antwerp with his grandfather. The two are as poor as beggars, but when they find an injured dog left for dead by his master, he becomes a loyal member of the family and brings happiness to their lives. While melodramatic at times, it’s very well done as far as melodramas go.
Even better, however, is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Markheim.” (There’s nothing to indicate that this one takes place in Northern Europe, other than the German flavor of the titular surname.) On Christmas evening, a lone customer enters an antique dealer’s shop. After a brief exchange of words, the customer kills the shopkeeper and proceeds to rob the place. Like Edgar Allen Poe might have done, Stevenson focuses less on the actual crime than he does on the psychological state of the murderer after the deed is done. The story then takes a very unexpected turn and morphs into a riveting philosophical thriller.
The ten volumes in the Stories by English Authors series are not numbered, so you don’t have to read them in any particular order. I would suggest starting with this one, since it’s clearly one of the better books in the bunch. If you’re interested in 19th-century literature, you might also want to check out two other Scribner’s series: Stories by American Authors, from 1884, and Stories by Foreign Authors, from 1898. The former ten-volume collection is rather disappointing, but the latter is particularly good.
Stories in this collection
The Bird on Its Journey by Beatrice Harraden
Koosje: A Study of Dutch Life by John Strange Winter
A Dog of Flanders by Ouida
Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson
Queen Tita’s Wager by William Black
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Nae muckle tae gie excited abit
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| Sir Walter Scott |
This is the fourth book I’ve reviewed from the ten-volume Stories by English Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. Each book in the series is titled after the location in which its stories are set—Scotland in this case, of course. The title is misleading, however, in that the series apparently uses the word “English” to mean “British.” The six authors represented in this collection of short fiction are in fact Scottish, not English. Some of Britain’s greatest literature has come from Scotland, but this isn’t it. Despite the presence of luminaries like Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, this volume doesn’t admirably represent the state of Scottish literature in the late 19th century.
One problem with Scottish tales, if those included here are any indication, is that authors often feel compelled to dress up their stories in uniquely Scottish local color, starting with the requisite Scottish accent, and apparently the thicker the better. Thus, all the dialogue in these six stories has been transcribed into the Scottish brogue, with varying degrees of success. “No” becomes “nae,” “know” becomes “ken,” “much” becomes “muckle,” and so on. This presents two problems. First and foremost, it can be a pain to read, and sometimes you can’t even figure out what’s being said, so the very story that’s being told is obscured. The second and more vexing problem is when the story itself is rather inconsequential. The author’s primary intention in writing the piece is to demonstrate his prowess in transcribing the highland dialect. In such cases, you end up with formulaic, run-of-the-mill stories dressed up in the trappings of picturesque Scottishness. At least a few of the entries here are guilty of this greater sin.
Perhaps only because I approached this book with optimism, its first entry is its best. In “The Courting of T’nowhead’s Bell” by J. M. Barrie, a young weaver courts his sweetheart, but he’s not the only young man in this rural village who aspires to be the girl’s husband. The competition between the two suitors is quite funny, but you have to wade through the thick accent to get at the humor beneath. Another humorous tale, “The Glenmutchkin Railway” by “Professor Aytoun” has the potential to be funny, but it goes on way too long. It’s about two con artists building a pyramid scheme around an imaginary railroad, but it gets bogged down in stock market minutiae.
The two entries by Scott and Stevenson are worth mentioning because of the authors’ illustrious careers, but the stories included here are far from their best work. Both stories touch on the horror genre and might have been truly scary if not for the painstaking decipherment required to read the text. Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” concerns a tenant farmer who is denied a receipt for payment of his rent, and has to go to hell to get one. In Stevenson’s “Thrawn Janet,” a fearsome preacher takes as his housekeeper a woman accused of dabbling in deviltry. There are a lot of spooky goings-on, but in the end they don’t add up to anything that makes sense.
Rounding out the collection are “A Doctor of the Old School” by Ian Maclaren and “The Heather Lintie” by S. R. Crockett, probably the least interesting works in the book. Scotland deserves better. How about some Arthur Conan Doyle? It seems these six stories were chosen for their diligent efforts to render the charming national accent into text, with less thought given to their literary merit.
Stories in this collection
The Courting of T’nowhead’s Bell by J. M. Barrie
“The Heather Lintie” by S. R. Crockett
A Doctor of the Old School by Ian Maclaren
Wandering Willie’s Tale by Sir Walter Scott
The Glenmutchkin Railway by Professor Aytoun
Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson
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