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The Amber Gods and Other Stories
A widely held vision of nineteenth-century American women is of lives lived in naive, domestic peace—the girls of Little Women making do until father comes home from the war. Nothing could be less true of Harriet Prescott Spofford's stories. In fact, her editor at the Atlantic Monthly at first refused to believe that an unworldly woman from New England had written them. Her style, though ornate by our 20th century standards, adds to its atmosphere, like heavy, Baroque furniture in a large and creepy house.
The title story presents a self-centered and captivating woman who ruthlessly steals her orphan cousin's lover. In "Circumstance," a pioneer woman returning home through the woods at night is caught by a panther; her husband, who has come to save her, can only watch from the ground as she sings for her life, pinned in a tree. A train engineer hallucinates again and again that he is running over his wife. And Mrs. Craven, who's a bit "weak" in the head, mindlessly repeats "Three men went down cellar and only two came up." These stories combine elements of the best ghost stories—timing, detail, and character —with just enough chill to make you think twice about turning out your lights at night.
Collects seven stories, including her classic detective story "In a Cellar" (1859), her frightening tale of frontier adventure, "Circumstance" (1860), and her complex fantasy "The Amber Gods" (1860), considered "one of the most powerful short stories in the language" by Quinn. "The Romantic Gothic tales of Harriet Prescott Spofford have affinities with the frenzied monologues of Poe and the self-absorbed sinners of Hawthorne. The heroine of "The Amber Gods" is Giorgione Willoughby (called 'Yone'), an inversion of the dark lady of the Gothic, a sort of blond Ligeia. Perverse, vainglorious, blasphemous, she is a type of malign spirit who serves the strange gods symbolized by the beads of an amber necklace, a sort of Satan's rosary ... Bizarre, sensational, and cryptic in its macabre depiction of the fatal lady as a Venusian figure, 'The Amber Gods' is a connecting link between the physical Gothicism of Poe and the cerebral Gothicism of Henry James. Going beyond the extrinsic Gothicism of 'Ligeia,' Spofford's story [according to Barton Levi St. Armand] 'startled the American public into a confrontation with, if not tolerance for, the erotic nature of woman.'" - Frank, Through the Pale Door: A Guide To and Through the American Gothic 449.
"Mrs. Spofford wrote in her long career two hundred and seventy-five short stories. She could not always be at her best, but she reflects in her career some of the most important phases of the short story. No one has better portrayed the relations of sound and color, the influence of glorious music upon the fates of human beings. Few except Poe and Hawthorne have established so well the mystic relation of gems and flowers upon their characters, and we have to go back to Cooper and Melville for her equals in describing the moods of the sea. The artist who wrote 'The Amber Gods' in 1860 and published THE ELDER'S PEOPLE in 1920, swinging the complete circle between romantic idealism and classic realism, remains a remarkable phenomenon in our literature." - Quinn, American Fiction, p. 214.
The title story presents a self-centered and captivating woman who ruthlessly steals her orphan cousin's lover. In "Circumstance," a pioneer woman returning home through the woods at night is caught by a panther; her husband, who has come to save her, can only watch from the ground as she sings for her life, pinned in a tree. A train engineer hallucinates again and again that he is running over his wife. And Mrs. Craven, who's a bit "weak" in the head, mindlessly repeats "Three men went down cellar and only two came up." These stories combine elements of the best ghost stories—timing, detail, and character —with just enough chill to make you think twice about turning out your lights at night.
Collects seven stories, including her classic detective story "In a Cellar" (1859), her frightening tale of frontier adventure, "Circumstance" (1860), and her complex fantasy "The Amber Gods" (1860), considered "one of the most powerful short stories in the language" by Quinn. "The Romantic Gothic tales of Harriet Prescott Spofford have affinities with the frenzied monologues of Poe and the self-absorbed sinners of Hawthorne. The heroine of "The Amber Gods" is Giorgione Willoughby (called 'Yone'), an inversion of the dark lady of the Gothic, a sort of blond Ligeia. Perverse, vainglorious, blasphemous, she is a type of malign spirit who serves the strange gods symbolized by the beads of an amber necklace, a sort of Satan's rosary ... Bizarre, sensational, and cryptic in its macabre depiction of the fatal lady as a Venusian figure, 'The Amber Gods' is a connecting link between the physical Gothicism of Poe and the cerebral Gothicism of Henry James. Going beyond the extrinsic Gothicism of 'Ligeia,' Spofford's story [according to Barton Levi St. Armand] 'startled the American public into a confrontation with, if not tolerance for, the erotic nature of woman.'" - Frank, Through the Pale Door: A Guide To and Through the American Gothic 449.
"Mrs. Spofford wrote in her long career two hundred and seventy-five short stories. She could not always be at her best, but she reflects in her career some of the most important phases of the short story. No one has better portrayed the relations of sound and color, the influence of glorious music upon the fates of human beings. Few except Poe and Hawthorne have established so well the mystic relation of gems and flowers upon their characters, and we have to go back to Cooper and Melville for her equals in describing the moods of the sea. The artist who wrote 'The Amber Gods' in 1860 and published THE ELDER'S PEOPLE in 1920, swinging the complete circle between romantic idealism and classic realism, remains a remarkable phenomenon in our literature." - Quinn, American Fiction, p. 214.
280 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1989
4 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Harriet Prescott Spofford
169 books13 followersHarriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (April 3, 1835 – August 14, 1921) was a notable American writer remembered for her novels, poems and detective stories.
Born in Calais, Maine, in 1835 Spofford moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts, which was ever after her home, though she spent many of her winters in Boston and Washington, D.C. She attended the Putnam Free School in Newburyport, and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire from 1853 to 1855. At Newburyport her prize essay on Hamlet drew the attention of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who soon became her friend, and gave her counsel and encouragement.
Spofford began writing after her parents became sick, sometimes working fifteen hours a day. She contributed story papers for small pay to Boston. In 1859, she sent a story about Parisian life entitled "In a Cellar" to Atlantic Monthly. The magazine's editor, James Russell Lowell, at first believed the story to be a translation and withheld it from publication. Reassured that it was original, he published it and it established her reputation. She became a welcome contributor to the chief periodicals of the United States, both of prose and poetry.
Spofford's fiction had very little in common with what was regarded as representative of the New England mind. Her gothic romances were set apart by luxuriant descriptions, and an unconventional handling of female stereotypes of the day. Her writing was ideal, intense in feeling. In her descriptions and fancies, she reveled in sensuous delights and every variety of splendor.[citation needed]
In 1865, she married Richard S. Spofford, a Boston lawyer. They lived on Deer Island overlooking the Merrimack River at Amesbury, where she died on August 14, 1921.
When Higginson asked Emily Dickinson whether she had read Spofford's work "Circumstance", Dickinson replied, "I read Miss Prescott's 'Circumstance,' but it followed me in the dark, so I avoided her."
Born in Calais, Maine, in 1835 Spofford moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts, which was ever after her home, though she spent many of her winters in Boston and Washington, D.C. She attended the Putnam Free School in Newburyport, and Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire from 1853 to 1855. At Newburyport her prize essay on Hamlet drew the attention of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who soon became her friend, and gave her counsel and encouragement.
Spofford began writing after her parents became sick, sometimes working fifteen hours a day. She contributed story papers for small pay to Boston. In 1859, she sent a story about Parisian life entitled "In a Cellar" to Atlantic Monthly. The magazine's editor, James Russell Lowell, at first believed the story to be a translation and withheld it from publication. Reassured that it was original, he published it and it established her reputation. She became a welcome contributor to the chief periodicals of the United States, both of prose and poetry.
Spofford's fiction had very little in common with what was regarded as representative of the New England mind. Her gothic romances were set apart by luxuriant descriptions, and an unconventional handling of female stereotypes of the day. Her writing was ideal, intense in feeling. In her descriptions and fancies, she reveled in sensuous delights and every variety of splendor.[citation needed]
In 1865, she married Richard S. Spofford, a Boston lawyer. They lived on Deer Island overlooking the Merrimack River at Amesbury, where she died on August 14, 1921.
When Higginson asked Emily Dickinson whether she had read Spofford's work "Circumstance", Dickinson replied, "I read Miss Prescott's 'Circumstance,' but it followed me in the dark, so I avoided her."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 27, 2022
3.5/5
I may sink this rating down a star further on out, but in light of today's bout of reading leaving me rather pleased, I'd rather hold on to what remaining good will I have for the moment. For this is yet another work hailing from a severely underread author, one who smacks far more of Poe and the gothic than of Alcott and the domestic, but due to a bout of rather desperate socioeconomic forces, submitted her writing prowess to first capitalism and then religion. A tale frequently told during certain areas of the world during certain centuries, I imagine, but I must admit, Spofford bears up better than most examples I've come across, if sometimes merely in terms of a single singularity rather than an overarching quality. For if the Poe didn't tip you off, this author delights in unloading a sea of syntax and a Mariana's Trench of dictionary terms at every point, and of the ten tales represented here, more than half risk completely losing themselves to overly indulgent, and thus borderline nonsensical, froth. And yet, give Spofford a structure, as is the case with "Old Madame" and a certain family history of several centuries prior, and narratological purpose weds to evocative prose so splendidly and so profoundly that one wishes it had been a novel in its own right. So, certainly not to everyone's tastes, but for those who don't mind sinking (although in an admittedly hit or miss fashion) for a time into the writing of someone who, were circumstances different, could may have well been an early crafter of horror or science fiction in her own right, this is rather a rare treat.
As I said, this collection is rather hit or miss. The introduction rhapsodizes about "In a Cellar" and "The Amber Gods" and gives "Circumstance" and "In the Maguerriwock" their due, but I personally found the tales' respective mixes of non-watertight mysteries and blowsy dramas compounded by not too small a measure of white othering too filmy to leave a lasting impression. "The Black Bess," and "Her Story" both heavily rely on the hazy voluptuousness that literature loves to use as demarcation between sanity and madness, and I much preferred it to when the writing fully committed to its traversal of the unknown, whether unexplored continent as in "The Moonstone Mass" or supernatural hauntings in the case of "The Godmothers," for at least there's some tangible death that a reader can sink one's teeth into. In comparison to the rest of the collection, "Miss Susan's Love Affair" is almost entirely straightforward and thus suffers heavily for it, leaving "Old Madame," the second of the last of the collection, to wear the crown in my personal estimation. Bombastic a claim as this is, that particular piece reminded me of nothing so much as Wuthering Heights with its socially strangled romances and hellishly damned family lines, albeit showing far more clearly the historical bones infusing the story's flesh in a way that I, indulger in well written nonfiction that I am, found deliciously compelling. Certainly not one of the florid thrusts that Spofford composed whilst she was still Prescott, but the older I grow, the more I recognize the value of tempering when it comes to writing in a way that hedges one's strengths and bears up one's weaknesses (although I could do without the selfish holier-than-thou conservatism so many readers seem to confuse that with). It's not enough to make me go track down everything else that's survived of the writer's work (indeed, there doesn't seem to be much beyond this selection of stories), but it does make me think about potentials, especially if a writer of today were to take on the tale in as richly infused a manner as it deserved without attempting to stuff an 800 page work into 400 printed sheets. Certainly not a thought I expected to be dwelling upon at the close of this collection, and sufficient for me to give the entirety a higher rating, leastwise for now.
I suppose, considering everything I've said previously in this review, that it would be fair to classify this as a "hidden gem." The phrase is a bit too uncritically positive for my liking, especially in a case of writing where the quibbles are plain to see, but when Spofford does something well, she does it very, very well, to the point that, from thereon out, I'll have a hard time taking seriously anyone who proclaims themselves to be some sort of disinterrer of the unfairly buried in the halls of literature but doesn't have some awareness of her work. It certainly has me craving well written pieces of a more than eerie quality that doesn't devolve as lazily into jump scares, eugenics, or general bigotry as so much tends to do these days, but when my choices seem to be confined to Lovecraft and his myriad gutless offspring, I can barely even muster the strength necessary to even begin the search. That sort of inured despondency may be why Spofford did so well in my estimation on an instinctual level, if less so on a critical one, and in this particular case, I'll take what I can get. The author may prove less enticing and more soporific to most, but there really isn't any quite like her, and in these days of endless derivatives, it's always good to engage with writing that did its own thing for better or worse.
I may sink this rating down a star further on out, but in light of today's bout of reading leaving me rather pleased, I'd rather hold on to what remaining good will I have for the moment. For this is yet another work hailing from a severely underread author, one who smacks far more of Poe and the gothic than of Alcott and the domestic, but due to a bout of rather desperate socioeconomic forces, submitted her writing prowess to first capitalism and then religion. A tale frequently told during certain areas of the world during certain centuries, I imagine, but I must admit, Spofford bears up better than most examples I've come across, if sometimes merely in terms of a single singularity rather than an overarching quality. For if the Poe didn't tip you off, this author delights in unloading a sea of syntax and a Mariana's Trench of dictionary terms at every point, and of the ten tales represented here, more than half risk completely losing themselves to overly indulgent, and thus borderline nonsensical, froth. And yet, give Spofford a structure, as is the case with "Old Madame" and a certain family history of several centuries prior, and narratological purpose weds to evocative prose so splendidly and so profoundly that one wishes it had been a novel in its own right. So, certainly not to everyone's tastes, but for those who don't mind sinking (although in an admittedly hit or miss fashion) for a time into the writing of someone who, were circumstances different, could may have well been an early crafter of horror or science fiction in her own right, this is rather a rare treat.
As I said, this collection is rather hit or miss. The introduction rhapsodizes about "In a Cellar" and "The Amber Gods" and gives "Circumstance" and "In the Maguerriwock" their due, but I personally found the tales' respective mixes of non-watertight mysteries and blowsy dramas compounded by not too small a measure of white othering too filmy to leave a lasting impression. "The Black Bess," and "Her Story" both heavily rely on the hazy voluptuousness that literature loves to use as demarcation between sanity and madness, and I much preferred it to when the writing fully committed to its traversal of the unknown, whether unexplored continent as in "The Moonstone Mass" or supernatural hauntings in the case of "The Godmothers," for at least there's some tangible death that a reader can sink one's teeth into. In comparison to the rest of the collection, "Miss Susan's Love Affair" is almost entirely straightforward and thus suffers heavily for it, leaving "Old Madame," the second of the last of the collection, to wear the crown in my personal estimation. Bombastic a claim as this is, that particular piece reminded me of nothing so much as Wuthering Heights with its socially strangled romances and hellishly damned family lines, albeit showing far more clearly the historical bones infusing the story's flesh in a way that I, indulger in well written nonfiction that I am, found deliciously compelling. Certainly not one of the florid thrusts that Spofford composed whilst she was still Prescott, but the older I grow, the more I recognize the value of tempering when it comes to writing in a way that hedges one's strengths and bears up one's weaknesses (although I could do without the selfish holier-than-thou conservatism so many readers seem to confuse that with). It's not enough to make me go track down everything else that's survived of the writer's work (indeed, there doesn't seem to be much beyond this selection of stories), but it does make me think about potentials, especially if a writer of today were to take on the tale in as richly infused a manner as it deserved without attempting to stuff an 800 page work into 400 printed sheets. Certainly not a thought I expected to be dwelling upon at the close of this collection, and sufficient for me to give the entirety a higher rating, leastwise for now.
I suppose, considering everything I've said previously in this review, that it would be fair to classify this as a "hidden gem." The phrase is a bit too uncritically positive for my liking, especially in a case of writing where the quibbles are plain to see, but when Spofford does something well, she does it very, very well, to the point that, from thereon out, I'll have a hard time taking seriously anyone who proclaims themselves to be some sort of disinterrer of the unfairly buried in the halls of literature but doesn't have some awareness of her work. It certainly has me craving well written pieces of a more than eerie quality that doesn't devolve as lazily into jump scares, eugenics, or general bigotry as so much tends to do these days, but when my choices seem to be confined to Lovecraft and his myriad gutless offspring, I can barely even muster the strength necessary to even begin the search. That sort of inured despondency may be why Spofford did so well in my estimation on an instinctual level, if less so on a critical one, and in this particular case, I'll take what I can get. The author may prove less enticing and more soporific to most, but there really isn't any quite like her, and in these days of endless derivatives, it's always good to engage with writing that did its own thing for better or worse.
January 23, 2019
I haven't actually read this whole book yet, but the two stories I read were fantastic. "The Amber Gods" involves a fairly self-centered narrator, but the style is so much fun. Spofford's descriptions are lush and vivid and the ending is a bit of a shock. "In a Cellar" is a detective story to rival Poe or Doyle. It's a real shame that her stories are out of print and I can only get them in e-books.
February 11, 2026
Harriet Prescott Spofford’s The Amber Gods and Other Stories (1863) has been revived by feminist scholars and places in the 19th century American literary tradition as a substitution for Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, etc. My exposure came through an American literature survey course, which featured only female authors, which, in retrospect, feels like being the victim of a theft of some kind. I have, of course, read many of the other, more eminent authors on my own, but the Canon Wars has casualties.
These collections were popular in the 19th century, though they were understood as sensationalistic. The sensationalism of that era is more sophisticated than today's, but this isn't an argument for the merit of canonical inclusion. Yes, this collection blends Romantic and Gothic tropes like obsession, vanity, moral allegory, and exoticism to entertain, but these were existing troupes Spofford could simply draw from at-will. For instance, Shelley's Frankenstein: The 1818 Text precedes this work by at least four decades and is significantly weightier.
Some will try to argue that Spofford's stories have innovated within the canonical tradition, but this argument is entirely premise on a very narrow representationalism. I'm obviously not persuaded by this argument. Such a rationale would be reasonable for inclusion in a history of 19th century American female literature course, but this is not how my exposure came about.
The titular story in the collection is the most famous, featuring Giorgione (Yone, an exotic and flaw protagonist, who recounts how she deliberately sabotages the budding romance between her gentle, orphaned cousin Louise and the artist Vaughan Rose, deploying her beauty, charm, and a set of supposedly cursed string of amber beads inherited from a “little Asian” slave. Though Louise embodies quiet devotion and domestic virtue, Yone succeeds in captivating Vaughan and marrying him. The triumph proves hollow, unsurprisingly, as Vaughan soon becomes consumed not with Yone herself but with rendering her beauty on canvas, reducing her from a living partner to a mere aesthetic object. As his artistic obsession deepens and his emotional attention drifts back toward the soulful, steadfast Louise, Yone, neglected and increasingly isolated, begins to waste away. The story culminates in a macabre revelation when Yone, mid-narrative, realizes she has already died; glancing at a clock, she understands that she has been recounting events as a ghost, transforming her tale of rivalry and vanity into a posthumous confession. So, as you can see, pretty tired tropes that look like many other more impressive works of literature.
These collections were popular in the 19th century, though they were understood as sensationalistic. The sensationalism of that era is more sophisticated than today's, but this isn't an argument for the merit of canonical inclusion. Yes, this collection blends Romantic and Gothic tropes like obsession, vanity, moral allegory, and exoticism to entertain, but these were existing troupes Spofford could simply draw from at-will. For instance, Shelley's Frankenstein: The 1818 Text precedes this work by at least four decades and is significantly weightier.
Some will try to argue that Spofford's stories have innovated within the canonical tradition, but this argument is entirely premise on a very narrow representationalism. I'm obviously not persuaded by this argument. Such a rationale would be reasonable for inclusion in a history of 19th century American female literature course, but this is not how my exposure came about.
The titular story in the collection is the most famous, featuring Giorgione (Yone, an exotic and flaw protagonist, who recounts how she deliberately sabotages the budding romance between her gentle, orphaned cousin Louise and the artist Vaughan Rose, deploying her beauty, charm, and a set of supposedly cursed string of amber beads inherited from a “little Asian” slave. Though Louise embodies quiet devotion and domestic virtue, Yone succeeds in captivating Vaughan and marrying him. The triumph proves hollow, unsurprisingly, as Vaughan soon becomes consumed not with Yone herself but with rendering her beauty on canvas, reducing her from a living partner to a mere aesthetic object. As his artistic obsession deepens and his emotional attention drifts back toward the soulful, steadfast Louise, Yone, neglected and increasingly isolated, begins to waste away. The story culminates in a macabre revelation when Yone, mid-narrative, realizes she has already died; glancing at a clock, she understands that she has been recounting events as a ghost, transforming her tale of rivalry and vanity into a posthumous confession. So, as you can see, pretty tired tropes that look like many other more impressive works of literature.
February 25, 2009
I hadn't read this collection in years, though I remembered loving it. I just read it again last night, and now I remember why. It's fantastic! Spofford remains one of my favorite 19th century authors. If you check it out, I highly recommend "The Amber Gods" and "Circumstance."
September 12, 2019
The title story alone will haunt me forever,
November 3, 2021
rating based on:
- The Amber Gods
- Her Story
- The Amber Gods
- Her Story
November 3, 2025
read for class, i really enjoyed the gendered aspects of the story
Want to read
August 13, 2024Read so far:
*In a cellar --
*The amber gods --
Circumstance --3
*In the Maguerriwock --
The moonstone mass --2
The black Bess --
*Her story --
Miss Susan's love affair --
Old Madame --
The godmothers --1
***
Mr. Furbush --2
*The ray of displacement --
*The mount of sorrow --
*In a cellar --
*The amber gods --
Circumstance --3
*In the Maguerriwock --
The moonstone mass --2
The black Bess --
*Her story --
Miss Susan's love affair --
Old Madame --
The godmothers --1
***
Mr. Furbush --2
*The ray of displacement --
*The mount of sorrow --
May 6, 2016
Messa da parte dalla storia letteraria, la Spofford invece avrebbe il diritto di essere ricordata.
March 15, 2020
"The Amber Gods"
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews