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Horrid Mysteries
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
First published January 1, 1791
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 4, 2023
Okay, okay, The Genius won't be "good" for most people. It's late 18th century schlock, for all intents and purposes, and compared to many of the greats of the day, like Austen and Morgan, it's not terribly readable but! and this is a big BUT, if you study 18th/19th century literature and have even a passing knowledge of modern dark fantasy and erotic thrillers there is an argument to be made that Carl Grosse was laying the foundations.
The story rambles a lot, with frequent, seemingly meaningless, divergences that only serve to estrange our protagonist from another friend when either he tries to sleep with said friend's wife, or the friend tries to sleep with protagonist's wife, but there is also a shadowy Cabal orchestrating events, lots of sexual intrigues, and an argument to be made for some aspects of early magical realism all threaded throughout The Genius. Seeing this early prototype of the kinds of genre fiction I gravitate towards today was fascinating. Plus, you know, researchers be reading and whatnot.
Probably not a casual read for the average book lover by any means, but if you're in this very specific space, there's some interesting kernels buried in there.
The story rambles a lot, with frequent, seemingly meaningless, divergences that only serve to estrange our protagonist from another friend when either he tries to sleep with said friend's wife, or the friend tries to sleep with protagonist's wife, but there is also a shadowy Cabal orchestrating events, lots of sexual intrigues, and an argument to be made for some aspects of early magical realism all threaded throughout The Genius. Seeing this early prototype of the kinds of genre fiction I gravitate towards today was fascinating. Plus, you know, researchers be reading and whatnot.
Probably not a casual read for the average book lover by any means, but if you're in this very specific space, there's some interesting kernels buried in there.
March 5, 2018
This is a weird one. It begins with and undeath and ends with a murder and nothing much happens in between. I am not even sure what happened at the end.... was Lewis just in love with whoever Carlos was? Was the servant trying to kill him the whole time? What was Lewis reading at the end? Nothing happened for so long and then just done, the end.
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January 12, 2023*Important note. Do not buy the ReadRead edition of this book (purple and black cover) if you want any clue of what's going on. It's only the third of four volumes (!) and also is an antique type that's distractingly hard to read. I started over with the Valancourt ebook and found the editing much better and then read Vols 1, 2, and 4.*
I was originally drawn to this because it's one of the "horrid novels" listed by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.
Having said all that, this is one of the most bizarre books I've ever read. To call the plot convoluted is not enough, rather, it's nonsensical. There are moments that could come out of Eyes Wide Shut or a Lynch film, and then Volume 3 is filled with odd pranks played on noblemen. The narrator's wife Elmira comes back from the dead.... too many times to count really, and I figured she'd show up on the last page (she didn't, but someone else did!)
Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable romp with some gothic touches-- secret societies and conspiracies rather than ghosts and vampires, and devolving into a picaresque style for some longer stretches. Someone ought to just rewrite it and end up with a better-written, more coherent and still very strange gothic book!
I was originally drawn to this because it's one of the "horrid novels" listed by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.
Having said all that, this is one of the most bizarre books I've ever read. To call the plot convoluted is not enough, rather, it's nonsensical. There are moments that could come out of Eyes Wide Shut or a Lynch film, and then Volume 3 is filled with odd pranks played on noblemen. The narrator's wife Elmira comes back from the dead.... too many times to count really, and I figured she'd show up on the last page (she didn't, but someone else did!)
Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable romp with some gothic touches-- secret societies and conspiracies rather than ghosts and vampires, and devolving into a picaresque style for some longer stretches. Someone ought to just rewrite it and end up with a better-written, more coherent and still very strange gothic book!
June 14, 2023
How to talk about this novel? Well, it is one of the titles given in a list of "horrid novels" in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, and though it's the last novel listed, it's my third read out of the seven given. And if you're saying, "But Rosa, there's no book titled The Genius on that list," that's true. The novel, originally written for a German audience in 1791, was released in England in 1798 under a different title, and the one used in Northanger Abbey is that name: Horrid Mysteries.
Trying to find a way to read this was, as with The Necromancer: A Tale of the Black Forest, a bit of an adventure (and not really worth all the effort it took, to be quite honest, but what can you do?) I found a copy of the book on Hoopla, and, as with The Necromancer, discovered after I started reading it that it was only an extract of the book. Unlike the previous work, however, this one was the entirety of the third volume (of which there are four volumes in total). When I first started reading it, I just thought the story was starting in media res, which would have been confusing for a bit, but would have been an interesting start for a Gothic novel. But when I read a review here on Goodreads, I saw that the particular edition that was offered by Hoopla was only a portion of the story. (I should have realized this because the version of The Necromancer I originally tried to read was from the same publisher and also the only one Hoopla offered in that case.) So then I had to search online for either a free or, barring that, a cheap copy of the novel. Thankfully, after about an hour I discovered that Google books offered all 4 books (released over two volumes) for free. So volumes I, II, and IV are read via Google books, and Volume III was read using Hoopla (though the ReadRead edition Hoopla offers was not corrected for typos brought over from the different type faces, so what were stylized "s" letters in the original manuscript were printed as "f" letters in that rendition and so if you read that one, just know that if something doesn't make sense, you probably need to make a mental correction on the lettering.
As to the work itself, this book is what you get when a man who believes in the power of his own Big D**k Energy is left to write his own memoirs. Now, some of my distaste for the main character has to do with my distaste for the patriarchal trends of the time (the late 18th century), but some of it just that I didn't like this man at all. I can appreciate the "bros before hoes" mentality cos I definitely am a "chicks before dicks" sort of gal, but this man assumes all women who love a man who isn't her husband is morally wrong, but it's not morally wrong for a man to sequester his wife in a cloister so he can go out to another country for a year and make a mistress of another man's wife. And in that situation, the other man's wife was in the wrong, but it was not wrong for the man to seduce said notably married woman.
It may be of the times, but it's patriarchal bullshit and after 400+ pages, I was more than ready to be done with it.
What I did like to ruminate on was why Jane Austen decided to include it on her list because there's not a lot about it that fits in the gothic romance genre. I will point out that there are *some* elements present: Don Carlos's first love Elmira seemingly dies on their wedding trip only to turn again twice later (though one of those women turns out to be an imposter, though it's never explained how or why she turned up); twice there are mysterious rites performed in order to be inducted into "the organization," which Don Carlos spends half of his time following as a devoted member and the rest of the time feeling victimized by them, depending on what the plot needs him to feel at any given time; three times Don Carlos is wandering through the wilderness and happens upon a cottage for sanctuary at just the right moment and all three times receives a hail mary message that saves his life not long after; there are mentions of people wandering around outside with lanterns doing mysterious deeds (which are never explained); Don Carlos's friends force themselves upon Don Carlos's love interests and then the women are always blamed for it in the end (the only difference being that in most Gothic Romance novels the woman accused is our heroine and therefore a paragon of virtue and innocence and the hero is always proved vindicated in his choice of love and that's not the case here.) In truth, most of the true "Gothic Romance" elements are in Volume I, and after that show up only for about ten pages in each volume of II-IV.
But that takes up maybe 60 pages out of 440. The rest of it consists of random discussions about philosophy (which is not without its merits), Don Carlos falling in love with virtually every pretty woman he meets and being universally adored by every village or landowning friend he comes across. Until that inevitable moment when the inamorata or spouse of one said landowning friend declares her love for Don Carlos instead and then said friendship would be on the rocks until said woman would end up dying of some disease or forced into a cloister for her "melancholic temperament." Gosh, I wanted to castrate this man so many times. If I wasn't a raging feminist before, I would be converted now.
But why did Austen include this? That was the fun thought experiment I had while working my way through these never ending 4 volumes. I had two theories. 1) This list is given by Isabella Thorpe, the world's most famous fake friend. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, in order to ingratiate herself into intimacies with Catherine she merely went around the library in Bath and wrote down the names of certain volumes that she then pretended to have read. After all, aside from the fact that all the men in this novel suck, there's nothing much that's truly "horrid" about this novel. The other option was that Austen listed all seven books with particular trends of each in mind. After all, all 3 of the 7 that I've read so far have been certain "forms" of Gothic Romance. The Necromancer focused on spectres and thieves (like a late 18th century Scooby Doo story) and The Orphan of the Rhine was like a hodgepodge of everything a newbie to the genre would expect to read in a Gothic Romance if all they had heard about was general trends -- women abducted away to distant castles and forced into nunneries and corruption within the Church and long sojourns in secret cottages in the wood for moral instruction, and the innocence of women as a virtue to be prized above all else...and of ghosts that turn out, in the end, to not be ghosts.
This form of Gothic Romance is about a man who goes about crying all the time (a lamentable trend among the heroes of the genre) and occasionally finding himself subject to the whims of a somewhat *mystical and all knowing* organization that meets in grottoes and in the woods.
While this particular story (and possibly this trend of Gothic Romance) wasn't at all to my taste, I do look forward to seeing what trends I come across in my next read of the seven, whatever that turns out to be.
Trying to find a way to read this was, as with The Necromancer: A Tale of the Black Forest, a bit of an adventure (and not really worth all the effort it took, to be quite honest, but what can you do?) I found a copy of the book on Hoopla, and, as with The Necromancer, discovered after I started reading it that it was only an extract of the book. Unlike the previous work, however, this one was the entirety of the third volume (of which there are four volumes in total). When I first started reading it, I just thought the story was starting in media res, which would have been confusing for a bit, but would have been an interesting start for a Gothic novel. But when I read a review here on Goodreads, I saw that the particular edition that was offered by Hoopla was only a portion of the story. (I should have realized this because the version of The Necromancer I originally tried to read was from the same publisher and also the only one Hoopla offered in that case.) So then I had to search online for either a free or, barring that, a cheap copy of the novel. Thankfully, after about an hour I discovered that Google books offered all 4 books (released over two volumes) for free. So volumes I, II, and IV are read via Google books, and Volume III was read using Hoopla (though the ReadRead edition Hoopla offers was not corrected for typos brought over from the different type faces, so what were stylized "s" letters in the original manuscript were printed as "f" letters in that rendition and so if you read that one, just know that if something doesn't make sense, you probably need to make a mental correction on the lettering.
As to the work itself, this book is what you get when a man who believes in the power of his own Big D**k Energy is left to write his own memoirs. Now, some of my distaste for the main character has to do with my distaste for the patriarchal trends of the time (the late 18th century), but some of it just that I didn't like this man at all. I can appreciate the "bros before hoes" mentality cos I definitely am a "chicks before dicks" sort of gal, but this man assumes all women who love a man who isn't her husband is morally wrong, but it's not morally wrong for a man to sequester his wife in a cloister so he can go out to another country for a year and make a mistress of another man's wife. And in that situation, the other man's wife was in the wrong, but it was not wrong for the man to seduce said notably married woman.
It may be of the times, but it's patriarchal bullshit and after 400+ pages, I was more than ready to be done with it.
What I did like to ruminate on was why Jane Austen decided to include it on her list because there's not a lot about it that fits in the gothic romance genre. I will point out that there are *some* elements present: Don Carlos's first love Elmira seemingly dies on their wedding trip only to turn again twice later (though one of those women turns out to be an imposter, though it's never explained how or why she turned up); twice there are mysterious rites performed in order to be inducted into "the organization," which Don Carlos spends half of his time following as a devoted member and the rest of the time feeling victimized by them, depending on what the plot needs him to feel at any given time; three times Don Carlos is wandering through the wilderness and happens upon a cottage for sanctuary at just the right moment and all three times receives a hail mary message that saves his life not long after; there are mentions of people wandering around outside with lanterns doing mysterious deeds (which are never explained); Don Carlos's friends force themselves upon Don Carlos's love interests and then the women are always blamed for it in the end (the only difference being that in most Gothic Romance novels the woman accused is our heroine and therefore a paragon of virtue and innocence and the hero is always proved vindicated in his choice of love and that's not the case here.) In truth, most of the true "Gothic Romance" elements are in Volume I, and after that show up only for about ten pages in each volume of II-IV.
But that takes up maybe 60 pages out of 440. The rest of it consists of random discussions about philosophy (which is not without its merits), Don Carlos falling in love with virtually every pretty woman he meets and being universally adored by every village or landowning friend he comes across. Until that inevitable moment when the inamorata or spouse of one said landowning friend declares her love for Don Carlos instead and then said friendship would be on the rocks until said woman would end up dying of some disease or forced into a cloister for her "melancholic temperament." Gosh, I wanted to castrate this man so many times. If I wasn't a raging feminist before, I would be converted now.
But why did Austen include this? That was the fun thought experiment I had while working my way through these never ending 4 volumes. I had two theories. 1) This list is given by Isabella Thorpe, the world's most famous fake friend. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, in order to ingratiate herself into intimacies with Catherine she merely went around the library in Bath and wrote down the names of certain volumes that she then pretended to have read. After all, aside from the fact that all the men in this novel suck, there's nothing much that's truly "horrid" about this novel. The other option was that Austen listed all seven books with particular trends of each in mind. After all, all 3 of the 7 that I've read so far have been certain "forms" of Gothic Romance. The Necromancer focused on spectres and thieves (like a late 18th century Scooby Doo story) and The Orphan of the Rhine was like a hodgepodge of everything a newbie to the genre would expect to read in a Gothic Romance if all they had heard about was general trends -- women abducted away to distant castles and forced into nunneries and corruption within the Church and long sojourns in secret cottages in the wood for moral instruction, and the innocence of women as a virtue to be prized above all else...and of ghosts that turn out, in the end, to not be ghosts.
This form of Gothic Romance is about a man who goes about crying all the time (a lamentable trend among the heroes of the genre) and occasionally finding himself subject to the whims of a somewhat *mystical and all knowing* organization that meets in grottoes and in the woods.
While this particular story (and possibly this trend of Gothic Romance) wasn't at all to my taste, I do look forward to seeing what trends I come across in my next read of the seven, whatever that turns out to be.
November 30, 2020
Barely gothic, though Jane Austen threw it into her famous list in Northanger Abbey. There's a brief prologue suggesting that the protagonist is being plotted against by a secret society, and then the very last paragraph suggests that maybe someone is still plotting against him. But most of the novel is just a series of romantic adventures that strain the protagonist's relationships with his closest male friends. The descriptions of these encounters are not lurid in any way, just dramatically interesting and very readable. I liked the book a lot, but yeah... not really gothic.
May 30, 2017
Το μικρότερο από τα επτά Horrid Novels του Northanger Abbey, οπότε το σχόλιο μου για αυτό θα είναι το μικρότερο. Το βιβλίο είναι απλά κακό!
June 14, 2025
The significance of this book lies in the fact that it deals with conspiracy theories and secret societies. There are dark caves, hierarchical oversight and an implication that this organisation's influence sreads all over the world. The rituals needed to become a member involve blood letting, which suggests something vaguely satanic.
The role of women in this book both Francesca, Rosalia and Elmira are proactive rather than reactive at a time when women who expressed an opinion were seen as subversive. Yet it is hard to dismiss these women as villains, as they are also victims of the power behind a wider conspiracy.
Like many eighteenth-century novels, it comprises four books piecing together a collection of stories from different perspectives. It does not stand up to twenty-first-century criticism, but its value lies in what it tells us about the eighteenth-century readers and writers.
The role of women in this book both Francesca, Rosalia and Elmira are proactive rather than reactive at a time when women who expressed an opinion were seen as subversive. Yet it is hard to dismiss these women as villains, as they are also victims of the power behind a wider conspiracy.
Like many eighteenth-century novels, it comprises four books piecing together a collection of stories from different perspectives. It does not stand up to twenty-first-century criticism, but its value lies in what it tells us about the eighteenth-century readers and writers.
March 14, 2024
Actually 1.5 stars. One of the titles listed in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, this late 18th century novel is a strange, frustrating, and difficult read. It's meandering, pompous, disconnected, and absurd with an awful lot of classism, violence, sexual intrigue, misogyny, and copious weeping/fainting; it was undoubtably the salacious pulp fiction of it's day (perhaps this was Austen's point in including it?). While I almost gave up on it, I found the last 30 pages to be the best in the book for their clarity, readablity, and a terrific surprise ending that I never saw coming. Definitely not for the casual (or discerning) reader but I'm glad to finally cross it off my list. Btw, the cover is truly horrid and disgusting on so. many. levels.
April 12, 2018
This took me forever to read and it was simply terrible. Basically, some guy whores his way through Europe and is pursued by a secret society that may or may not be bad. Everyone falls in love with him and he falls in love with everyone. I wasn't even clear what was happening half the time. I've read most of the Northanger Abbey "horrid novels" and this was easily the most horrid.
November 21, 2017
When I read the brief synopsis of this book, I expected to be fascinated, to have the same great impression as the one I had when I read The Ghost-Seer by Schiller. But I was disappointed. I found the book boring.
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May 30, 2025pensavo fosse un libro sulle società segrete e invece era un libro sulle 26272 passioni di Carlos su sua moglie che muore e resuscita 2 volte e poi muore davvero su 3 tentati omicidi e 2 omicidi compiuti io non ho capito niente 3/4 del tempo ma sicuramente nella sua testa aveva senso
November 16, 2017
What a dump.
June 29, 2023
Terribly confusing. Too many titled people, too much fainting and crying. Labyrinthian castles and forests.
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March 27, 2009A wonderfully terrible book!
July 11, 2021
The adventure and great good humor cannot make up for the fragmentation and missing events.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews