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The twelve Gothic tales of this collection span the nineteenth-century South and are from some of the most famous writers of the age, such as Edgar Allan Poe, to more recently rediscovered and now celebrated writers such as Kate Chopin and Charles Chesnutt, to the completely and unfairly obscure E. Levi Brown. Companion readings—some themselves quite chilling—are by celebrated writers and well-known historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, Charles Brockden Brown, Jacques Dessalines, and W. E. B DuBois. These readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner’s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.
“This is a critically important collection of Southern Gothic tales, which are incisively contextualized to the issues of race and slavery. The inclusion of contemporaneous nonfiction situates these stories within the culture that produced them. This is an essential collection for anyone interested in the origins of the Southern Gothic.” —Andrew Smith, Professor of Nineteenth-Century English Literature, School of English, University of Sheffield, UK
Acknowledgments; Introduction; I The Tales; Chapter One Victor Séjour, “The Mulatto” (1837, new English translation by Susan Castillo Street); Chapter Two Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839); Chapter Three Edgar Allan Poe, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (1844); Chapter Four Henry Clay Lewis, “A Struggle for Life” (1850); Chapter Five George Washington Cable, “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” (1879); Chapter Six Lafcadio Hearn, “The Ghostly Kiss” (1880); Chapter Seven Thomas Nelson Page, “No Haid Pawn” (1887); Chapter Eight Charles Chesnutt, “Po’ Sandy” (1888); Chapter Nine Grace King, “The Little Convent Girl” (1893); Chapter Ten E. Levi Brown, “At the Hermitage” (1893); Chapter Eleven Kate Chopin, “Désirée’s Baby’’ (1893); Chapter Twelve M. E. M. Davis, “At La Glorieuse” (1897); II Background; Chapter Thirteen J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer: Letter IX (1782); Chapter Fourteen Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia: Query XVIII (1785); Chapter Fifteen Jean- Jacques Dessalines, “Liberty or Death: Proclamation, 28 April 1804”; Chapter Sixteen Charles Brockden Brown, “On the Consequences of Abolishing the Slave Trade to the West Indian Colonies” (1805); Chapter Seventeen Leonora Sansay, from Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo: Letter II, Letter XXI (1808); Chapter Eighteen Thomas Ruffi n Gray, from “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831); Chapter Nineteen Lafcadio Hearn, “St. Johns Eve— Voudouism” (1875); Chapter Twenty George Washington Cable, from “Salome Müller: The White Slave” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana , 1890); Chapter Twenty-One George Washington Cable, from “The Haunted House in Royal Street” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana, 1890); Chapter Twenty-Two Charles W. Chesnutt, “Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the South” (1901); Chapter Twenty- Three W. E. B. Du Bois, selection from “Of the Black Belt” (from The Souls of Black Folk , 1903); Index.