Talk:Tales of the Dead

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Stories table[edit]

I'm not sure of the names of all the stories in the German and French editions. Шизомби 02:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yes 31.209.202.4 (talk) 22:54, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quality[edit]

Is this a work in progress, because it is clearly unfinished. It is rambling, lacking coherance and focus. Is this worthy of an encyclopedia? No, clearly not in this current state. Please delete it, or significantly improve the quality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.58.60 (talk • contribs) 14:06, 6 October 2006

Caveat lector, the above anonymous contributor also advocates deleting the article on Mary Shelley. Improvement is the only real option. Шизомби 15:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Das Gespensterbuch[edit]

I've been able to identify the titles of the original German stories for all but one of the stories in Fantasmagoriana so far. La Chambre grise is mentioned in La Chambre noir; in Die schwartze Kammer it's called Die graue Stube. A.J. Day translated the title as The Grey Room and attributes it to "H.C" I may still find it in Das Gespensterbuch, or perhaps it was a story the French translator invented to serve the role of the story mentioned in the other one? That would be interesting. Шизомби 13:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had similar problems tracing all the German stories to their German originals. It seems that Day (and it may be Hale, as well) oversimplified when he claimed Eyries took them from Gespensterbuch. I've found a 1992 edition of the Gespensterbuch which contains:

Vorrede / Laun
Der Freischütz : eine Volkssage / Apel --
Der Geist des Verstorbenen / Laun --	[Le Revenant]
Die Bilder der Ahnen / Apel --	[Portraits de Famille/The Family Portraits]
Der Totenkopf / Laun --	[La Tête de Mort/The Death's Head]
König Pfau : Feenmärchen nach dem Französischen / Apel --
Die Totenbraut / Laun --	[La Morte Fiancée/The Death-Bride]
Die graue Stube : eine buchstäblich wahre Geschichte / H.C. --	[La Chambre grise]
Die schwarze Kammer : Anekdote / Apel --	[La Chambre noire]
Der Totentanz / Apel --
Nachrede / Apel.

But the original 1811-15 volumes don't seem to have "Die Bilder der Ahnen" or "Die graue Stube", and neither have "Stumme Liebe". I think it's likely not to contain the missing stories by coincidence, so the 1993 edition is collected from the stories from Fantasmagoriana (sans "Die Verwandtschaft mit der Geisterwelt"), with the famous "Freischütz" and others added from the original Gespensterbuch and elsewhere; note that "Die graue Stube" is the only non-Apel/Laun story, but is a logical inclusion from its direct mention in "Die schwarze Kammer". It was from this book that I assume Hale/Day got their theories that Eyries took most/all the stories from the Gespensterbuch, rather than various German sources, which is supported by the way Day gives the author of "The Grey Room" as "H.C."; it seems that before them, the German original was assumed lost: '"No German original has been discovered." --Garside'.

I haven't read a copy, so I can't be sure it's the source Eyries worked from, but Heinrich August Kerndörffer published a version of Die grau Stube at around the time, and from what I've encountered of 19th century German typography, could reasonably be H.C..

I'm going to add what I've found to the article, and clean it up some, but I'd really like to see the histories of these folk-ghost stories traced. --xensyria^T 23:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC) EDIT: 01:29, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a good chance that "Die graue Stube" actually was published in the Independent (Freimüthigen) under the initials H.C., as Apel and Schulze were apparently involved in newspaper ghost story publishing. --xensyria^T 01:22, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Die graue Stube" was written by H. Clauren, and published in two parts (for the significance of this, read "The Black Chamber") in his Erzählungen. This was published from 1818, however, so it's likely to have seen light first in a newspaper. Looking into German newspaper titles, and thinking more about it, it seems unlikely Apel would risk naming the paper directly, and so the Independent (Freimüthigen) is not likely to be the title. This was probably tracked down by Eyriès as relevant to "Die schwarze Kammer", and the principle that Eyriès would likely have worked from fewer rather than more sources means that even if the Gespensterbuch stories were published before their inclusion it's unlikely he translated them from any other source. --xensyria^T 15:52, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having said that, this book says that Clauren (a pseudonym of Carl Gottlieb Samuel Heun) published "Die graue Stube. (Eine buchstablich wahre Geschichte)" in the Freimüthigen in 1810. --xensyria^T 16:32, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Day actually gives the 1992 Gespensterbuch as the first item in his "Selected Bibliography", which confirms the source of the confusion:

1. Apel, J, & Laun, F., Gespenster Buch, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1992.

From his essay "Searching for the muse" at the end of Fantasmagoriana: Tales of the Dead: "Fantasmagoriana was… a collection of stories that had been originally written in German. These stories… were published in four volumes of their Gespensterbuch (G.J Göschen, Lepzig 1810 -1813), though Apel’s ‘Die Bilder der Ahnen’ was first published as early as 1805." --xensyria^T 23:16, 1 August 2012 (UTC) EDIT: 23:29, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Greek edition[edit]

The Greek edition may deserve a mention in the publication history of this book, especially as it's based on the English version (i.e. it has "The Storm"), but as it's almost a century later, and not relevant to the origins of the book, doesn't deserve to be in the table of stories. I've added the contents here in case anyone's interested, but will remove it from the article shortly, unless there are any objections.

The 1990s version received a Greek language translation by Nikos Stampakis (Νίκος Σταμπάκης). The translation was published as Istories ton Nekron (Ιστορίες των Nεκρών) by publishing house Archetypo-Metaekdotiki (Greek: Archetype - Meta-publishing) in Thessaloniki during November 2003. The Greek edition claims to be the first available in bookstores since the 1810s.

Tales of the Dead	Ιστορίες των Nεκρών
The Family Portraits	Τα Οικογενειακά Πορτραίτα
The Fated Hour	Η Μοιραία Ώρα
The Death's Head	Η Νεκροκεφαλή
The Death-Bride	Η Νύφη του Θανάτου
The Storm	Η Καταιγίδα
The Spectre Barber	Ο Κουρέας-Φάντασμα

--xensyria^T 23:19, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

--xensyria^T 23:42, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Family Portraits[edit]

I've just emerged out the other end of this maze of a story, and it seems to me the boy killed by Ditmar is the son of Count Bruno, but not of Bertha. The story states that he was killed immediately after their marriage, suggesting he had been the child of a previous relationship; and describes the girl, Hildegard, as their first born. Shtove (talk) 17:11, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

Probably read by Washington Irving, and possibly inspired some of his stories
A copy was included in George Lackington's circulating library or bookshop

--Yodin^T 12:35, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]