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The Cavern of Death
After a three year absence and a terrifying journey through the Black Forest, young Sir Albert has returned to Dornheim, eager to see again his friend Lord Frederic and his true love, the lady Constance. But his joy on his homecoming is short-lived when he learns he has rivals for Constance's love.
The Baron of Dornheim is set to marry her in three days, and anxious to prevent the marriage and wed her himself, Frederic solicits the horrified Albert to assassinate the Baron.
Determined to spare Constance a future with either the aged Dornheim or the murderous Frederic, Albert plots to rescue her from her father's castle. But when their plans are discovered, and a band of assassins are sent to murder Albert, he flees to the haunted Cavern of Death, where a phantom, a skeleton, and a bloody sword will reveal an unspeakable murder and the long-concealed secret of his own birth.
Phenomenally popular in both England and the United States upon its publication in 1794, "The Cavern of Death" was among the most influential and widely-read of early Gothic novels. This new edition includes a new introduction and notes for modern readers.
The Baron of Dornheim is set to marry her in three days, and anxious to prevent the marriage and wed her himself, Frederic solicits the horrified Albert to assassinate the Baron.
Determined to spare Constance a future with either the aged Dornheim or the murderous Frederic, Albert plots to rescue her from her father's castle. But when their plans are discovered, and a band of assassins are sent to murder Albert, he flees to the haunted Cavern of Death, where a phantom, a skeleton, and a bloody sword will reveal an unspeakable murder and the long-concealed secret of his own birth.
Phenomenally popular in both England and the United States upon its publication in 1794, "The Cavern of Death" was among the most influential and widely-read of early Gothic novels. This new edition includes a new introduction and notes for modern readers.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1794
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172 people want to read
About the author
Allen Grove
20 books2 followersBorn and raised in South Florida, Allen Grove is an author and an avid outdoorsman. His love for nature and quest for self-fulfillment are both heavy influences in his works. Most of the time you can find him writing under the sun, because mother nature tells the best stories. As a new author, he looks forward to perfecting his craft while traveling across the world. In his debut novel, Heart Like a Bear, the nature of the Bering Sea and the temperate northwest forests …
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 11, 2016
A short Gothic novel that has survived from the late 18th century, with such a plethora of the tropes pertaining to the genre and age, so as to be archetypal of its kind.
The cavern of death was originally serialized in a Londonian newspaper called The True Briton, but due to the necessity of using that print space to cover current events, it was abandoned before its completion in that manner. Fortunately, in 1794 it was put to print in leaflet format by the editor of the paper, a John Heriot, by the reason of its popularity. Indeed the masses must have found this to their satisfaction as several reprints were made during the next seven years, in Brittain as well as across the Atlantic.
The tale concerns the return of Sir Albert to the Black Forest region of Germany: For more than three years he has been journeying with his esquire Maurice, meanwhile he had won renown as a swordsman and even been knighted by Frederick Barbarossa himself. His return was spurred by his wish to once again see Lady Constance, his heart's captor but also a woman whose station is too high for his affections to be appropriate. Sir Albert wants merely to assure himself that her future will be one of happiness and then to return to his journeys. Fate does, however, seem to besiege her with miseries. For she is promised to wed the Baron of Dornheim, he is an elderly man and she despairs at being forced into this. Yet worse is that the Baron's son, Lord Frederic, also would vie for her hand, for he is a violent man who attempts to enlist Sir Albert in murdering the Baron so as to wed the Lady himself. Neither his heart nor his chivalrous disposition would allow Sir Albert to assist either of the masters of Dornheim, nor sit idly by; together Sir Albert and the Lady Constance would attempt to escape to where they cannot be reached. In the middle of this tale of romance we find The Cavern of Death, where it is said that the dead wander and infernal spirits reside, whereby meteors fall and horrid spectres speak; in there we find secrets that has been forgotten by the living and which is now only related by the deceased, yet if the living had but known these hidden truths their world would be entirely different.
Now, Frederick I Barbarossa reigned from 1152 to 1190 as king of Germany and Italy, not to mention as Holy Roman Emperor for most of that time; this is all we have to go by when it comes to identifying the time and age in which Sir Albert's adventures take place, yet it sufficiently consigns the tale to what was in the 18th century seen as the Gothic era. The locales are of an equally Gothic sort – medieval castles, dark forests, and dank caverns – thus further compiling the setting into an archetype of the genre. The Black Forest was also the setting of The Necromancer, or the Tale of the Black Forest by Karl F. Kahlert, a book released on the very same year, but with such a name that forest was bound to catch the attention of those who would write ghost stories. As for Sir Albert himself, no protagonist of the 18th century Gothic novel so embodies the valiant and gallant knight, which he most certainly is. The same can be said of his mission, to save the innocent damsel and preserve their true love for each other from the villains as well as from the threat of the supernatural. The villains, as is appropriate for the style, are people of power who threathen their love directly and with such malice as to render no sympathies from the reader. Finally, the supernatural is in no way less archetypal in its function: It functions as a mysterious entryway, here as so often elsewhere presented by the restless dead, through which the protagonist may discover those stories that lie deeply obscured yet which will reveal facts essential to solving the task at hand. In short, The cavern of death sits as the ultimate rendition of Gothic fiction.
Regarding the authorship of the novel, this may never be discovered yet at least two possibilities presents themselves: The first, John Heriot, was himself already behind two anonymous novels – The sorrows of the heart, a novel (1787) and The Half-pay officer: or memoirs of Charles Chanceley (1788) – when this one began its run on his newspaper; those novels showed a mediocre control of the language, but his 1792 non-fictional An historical sketch of Gibraltar &c shows much progress in this, so much so and so much in the direction of the language found in The cavern of death that his involvement cannot be readily dismissed. The other candidate is the writer hiding behind the nom de plume Mrs. Carver, as was suggested by Don Sheldon and others before him. This author made several anonymous Gothic novels, only a few of which were directly attributed to that alias; most of those we know to be by Mrs. Carver is due to a library catalogue from Minerva Press (1814) that bundled the novels together under that authorship. The cavern of death would have been Mrs. Carver's earliest known novel, and so there is nothing amiss in finding therein a language that is less accomplished than the highly lyrical output in the later novels. Yet any similarities between this novel and Mrs. Carver's other writings do not seem to be obvious enough to confirm any connection. Thus far there is quite insufficient proof of identity, and its not unlikely that the actual writer is a third person thus far unknown to us.
There seems to be two editions currently on the market. The Gale ECCO edition is a digitalization of the 1795 printing – almost perfectly reproduced and with no flaws in the text – and it is the edition which this review is founded upon. It most certainly looks and feels like the over two-hundred year old original, and with that feeling comes a closer connection to the audience of a bygone era. The other edition, by Valancourt Books, includes a very informative and well-researched introduction by Allen Grove, where he gives insight into the novels history as well as its place within the contemporary world of Gothic litterature. Both editions have their virtues and chosing between them seems a matter of simple preference.
The cavern of death is a very quick read at mere a hundred and twenty pages, further shortened by the fact that the text is large and even then hardly covers but half of any given page; this reviewer would estimate the total reading time to two or three hours. Short as it is and with being one of the earliest Gothic novels that so well compiles the genre – and who does so while presenting a compelling story meanwhile – this should be a recommended read for anyone with interest in the genre, and Ann Radcliffe in particular, or who would enjoy a classic romance novel.
The cavern of death was originally serialized in a Londonian newspaper called The True Briton, but due to the necessity of using that print space to cover current events, it was abandoned before its completion in that manner. Fortunately, in 1794 it was put to print in leaflet format by the editor of the paper, a John Heriot, by the reason of its popularity. Indeed the masses must have found this to their satisfaction as several reprints were made during the next seven years, in Brittain as well as across the Atlantic.
The tale concerns the return of Sir Albert to the Black Forest region of Germany: For more than three years he has been journeying with his esquire Maurice, meanwhile he had won renown as a swordsman and even been knighted by Frederick Barbarossa himself. His return was spurred by his wish to once again see Lady Constance, his heart's captor but also a woman whose station is too high for his affections to be appropriate. Sir Albert wants merely to assure himself that her future will be one of happiness and then to return to his journeys. Fate does, however, seem to besiege her with miseries. For she is promised to wed the Baron of Dornheim, he is an elderly man and she despairs at being forced into this. Yet worse is that the Baron's son, Lord Frederic, also would vie for her hand, for he is a violent man who attempts to enlist Sir Albert in murdering the Baron so as to wed the Lady himself. Neither his heart nor his chivalrous disposition would allow Sir Albert to assist either of the masters of Dornheim, nor sit idly by; together Sir Albert and the Lady Constance would attempt to escape to where they cannot be reached. In the middle of this tale of romance we find The Cavern of Death, where it is said that the dead wander and infernal spirits reside, whereby meteors fall and horrid spectres speak; in there we find secrets that has been forgotten by the living and which is now only related by the deceased, yet if the living had but known these hidden truths their world would be entirely different.
Now, Frederick I Barbarossa reigned from 1152 to 1190 as king of Germany and Italy, not to mention as Holy Roman Emperor for most of that time; this is all we have to go by when it comes to identifying the time and age in which Sir Albert's adventures take place, yet it sufficiently consigns the tale to what was in the 18th century seen as the Gothic era. The locales are of an equally Gothic sort – medieval castles, dark forests, and dank caverns – thus further compiling the setting into an archetype of the genre. The Black Forest was also the setting of The Necromancer, or the Tale of the Black Forest by Karl F. Kahlert, a book released on the very same year, but with such a name that forest was bound to catch the attention of those who would write ghost stories. As for Sir Albert himself, no protagonist of the 18th century Gothic novel so embodies the valiant and gallant knight, which he most certainly is. The same can be said of his mission, to save the innocent damsel and preserve their true love for each other from the villains as well as from the threat of the supernatural. The villains, as is appropriate for the style, are people of power who threathen their love directly and with such malice as to render no sympathies from the reader. Finally, the supernatural is in no way less archetypal in its function: It functions as a mysterious entryway, here as so often elsewhere presented by the restless dead, through which the protagonist may discover those stories that lie deeply obscured yet which will reveal facts essential to solving the task at hand. In short, The cavern of death sits as the ultimate rendition of Gothic fiction.
Regarding the authorship of the novel, this may never be discovered yet at least two possibilities presents themselves: The first, John Heriot, was himself already behind two anonymous novels – The sorrows of the heart, a novel (1787) and The Half-pay officer: or memoirs of Charles Chanceley (1788) – when this one began its run on his newspaper; those novels showed a mediocre control of the language, but his 1792 non-fictional An historical sketch of Gibraltar &c shows much progress in this, so much so and so much in the direction of the language found in The cavern of death that his involvement cannot be readily dismissed. The other candidate is the writer hiding behind the nom de plume Mrs. Carver, as was suggested by Don Sheldon and others before him. This author made several anonymous Gothic novels, only a few of which were directly attributed to that alias; most of those we know to be by Mrs. Carver is due to a library catalogue from Minerva Press (1814) that bundled the novels together under that authorship. The cavern of death would have been Mrs. Carver's earliest known novel, and so there is nothing amiss in finding therein a language that is less accomplished than the highly lyrical output in the later novels. Yet any similarities between this novel and Mrs. Carver's other writings do not seem to be obvious enough to confirm any connection. Thus far there is quite insufficient proof of identity, and its not unlikely that the actual writer is a third person thus far unknown to us.
There seems to be two editions currently on the market. The Gale ECCO edition is a digitalization of the 1795 printing – almost perfectly reproduced and with no flaws in the text – and it is the edition which this review is founded upon. It most certainly looks and feels like the over two-hundred year old original, and with that feeling comes a closer connection to the audience of a bygone era. The other edition, by Valancourt Books, includes a very informative and well-researched introduction by Allen Grove, where he gives insight into the novels history as well as its place within the contemporary world of Gothic litterature. Both editions have their virtues and chosing between them seems a matter of simple preference.
The cavern of death is a very quick read at mere a hundred and twenty pages, further shortened by the fact that the text is large and even then hardly covers but half of any given page; this reviewer would estimate the total reading time to two or three hours. Short as it is and with being one of the earliest Gothic novels that so well compiles the genre – and who does so while presenting a compelling story meanwhile – this should be a recommended read for anyone with interest in the genre, and Ann Radcliffe in particular, or who would enjoy a classic romance novel.
February 28, 2025
A simple, predictable story with a sensational touch, but also a decent entry into the flowery gothic romances of the 18th century.
I couldn’t help but root for Sir Albert all the way and whilst it might not be a top tier gothic of its era, I find it remarkable than I can root for a character in an older work like this compared to some of the flat, uninteresting charcters that plague so much of modern genre literature
With long run-on sentences, mildly archaic language and centuries old sensibilities, this is really only for those like me who wish to immerse themselves in or learn about the popular early gothics. There’s no action, but plenty of chivalry, romance, treachery, atmosphere, more treachery, secrets and hereditary truths. Splendid!
I couldn’t help but root for Sir Albert all the way and whilst it might not be a top tier gothic of its era, I find it remarkable than I can root for a character in an older work like this compared to some of the flat, uninteresting charcters that plague so much of modern genre literature
With long run-on sentences, mildly archaic language and centuries old sensibilities, this is really only for those like me who wish to immerse themselves in or learn about the popular early gothics. There’s no action, but plenty of chivalry, romance, treachery, atmosphere, more treachery, secrets and hereditary truths. Splendid!
October 18, 2017
As a reoccurring theme that seems to be in all my reviews at the moment, I read this book for my English Gothic module. It was alright, I felt gripped by some of the action but overall it was just boring.
I think the reason I couldn't relate is partly because of the language, it was boring and isn't very relatable to now and also the things that was written about doesn't make it very gothic to today, this can because they were much more scared of things in the 18th century that we aren't today.
The book was alright, but I wouldn't read it again.
I think the reason I couldn't relate is partly because of the language, it was boring and isn't very relatable to now and also the things that was written about doesn't make it very gothic to today, this can because they were much more scared of things in the 18th century that we aren't today.
The book was alright, but I wouldn't read it again.
June 6, 2022
This book was great. It had everything I wanted in an enticing story. I was quickly pulled in and liked the main character. The ending was full of twists that I couldn’t predict. The pace started off pretty normal and stayed that way until about 3/4 and then I found myself speed reading to find out what was gonna happen next. I am so pleased with this story. It was more exciting than some recent books I have read and it was first published in 1794. Definitely a good pick. Classic novel wins again!
September 24, 2022
Wow, what a great story!
I learned of this early gothic tale from a podcast discussion. The language is a little tough given it was written in late 1700s, but it is very readable and highly enjoyable. The story, which not long, has twists and is not predictable. Be sure to read publishers intro as it provides interesting info about the gothic genre.
I learned of this early gothic tale from a podcast discussion. The language is a little tough given it was written in late 1700s, but it is very readable and highly enjoyable. The story, which not long, has twists and is not predictable. Be sure to read publishers intro as it provides interesting info about the gothic genre.
November 17, 2015
That was a quick and easy read
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews