There was a buzzing in his ears, and a sudden dizziness came over him. The spectre seemed to dance up and down before his terror-glazed eyes, and the ghastly smile seemed to widen-widen on that deathlike countenance.
A mysterious tragedy at a beautiful house. A will leaving £80,000 to whoever can find it. A hanged man in the mountains. From Shadow Land and Other Ghost Stories contains three contrasting stories of hauntings with none of them to be read in the dark.
Corella Press' final instalment of their crime and mystery collection is a treat for lovers of the genre, promising a thrilling experience filled with twists and turns. You are invited to indulge in three gripping stories, pulled from nineteenth-century Australian newspaper serials, that prove the dead don't always remain lost. Behind every ghost hides a mystery thickened with murder and madness, love and tragedy, and secrecy and deception. Wrapped in a diverse cast of characters to resonate feelings of empathy and hate, From Shadow Land and Other Ghost stories is sure to appeal to a wide range of literary lovers and ghost story aficionados.
Maintaining Corella Press' intent, From Shadow Land and Other Ghost Stories gives voice to marginalised Australian writers whose words have been long forgotten. These are women who had to fight to be heard in a period where women's writing was severely undervalued - with some even adopting pseudonyms. While "Silverleaf" may be known by some, Julia S. Harris and "Jenny Wren" have become another mystery over time. Each story is accompanied by an author biography to honour and share the enigmatic lives that these nineteenth-century authors lived. Anyone who is interested in historical Australian fiction will be fascinated by these biographies and what they reveal about life in the nineteenth century.
These stories explore the concept of the Australian ghost story in different contexts, from the bushland to the manor and from heartbreak to fear.
What was buried has been unearthed. Don't miss out.
Author Biography:
Corella Press(TM) is a teaching initiative of The University of Queensland's Writing, Editing and Publishing (WEP) program within the School of Communication and Arts. Unearthing and bringing new life to nineteenth-century Australian crime and mystery stories, student interns at Corella Press(TM) source serialised fiction from early Australian periodicals to produce beautiful, thrilling, collectable books for contemporary readers. Corella Press(TM) provides a unique hands-on learning opportunity for UQ students. Students gain experience and are responsible for every aspect of publication, from Acquisitions and Editorial through to Production and Marketing. As its avian namesake suggests, Corella Press(TM) is playful, disruptive, and dynamic. The elusive Julia S. Harris is as ghostly as her writing-like many talented women authors, she has almost completely disappeared from the written record. Harris owned her status as a woman writer within Adelaide's writing community by often adopting the pen name 'Mrs Robert Harris'; while other evidence of her life has been lost to time, her pen name reveals to us that she was the wife of a Robert Harris. She was also the mother of an Elizabeth Fortesque, who passed away at just five months old. She likely helped to support her family with the money she made from small writing prizes, such as the Western Mail's Christmas story competition, translating the tragedy of her personal life into stories of murder, betrayal, and doomed romance. Such serialised works, including "The Oakhurst Tragedy" and "Sir Jaspar's Ward, or the Wraith of Trevor Park", were published in the Adelaide Observer, the South Australian Chronicle, the Western Mail, and the Healesville Guardian. In another of her works, "Euphemia Redmond: the Guardian Spirit of Knockmey Hall", Harris included the epigraph from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: All houses in which men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Such a sentiment is echoed in Harris' oeuvre, as she uses the symbolic haunted house to interrogate aspects of Australian culture that remain relevant to her contemporaries. Many of Harris' stories explore the sinister histories of gendered violence, xenophobia, and class discrimination that lurk behind the stately English manor. Her work may be interpreted as an Australian's critique or rejection of a culture inherited from our colonial predecessors. Corella Press is proud to restore Harris' unique voice to Australian literary history. A woman of mystery who attempted to conceal her identity under a pen name, Jenny Wren published works in newspapers all over Australia. Although there are two women known to have written behind this literary mask, we believe that the author of this story was a woman named Nellie Cruttenden. Her surviving stories were published between 1877 and 1926, with a gap of thirty-seven years between the publication of her last two known works-a period in which she may have spent producing this substantial novella. Cruttenden's short stories-which include "Frankie's Folly" and "Love's Sacrice"-share features with Wren's work, including coming-of-age storylines centred on marriage, love, and duty, with level-headed women at their hearts. Such stories also share the writing style, tone, and signature wit of "A Man and His Money". Corella Press is thrilled to have unearthed Cruttenden's work and for the opportunity to restore her to her rightful place in the Australian literary consciousness.
