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This review is based on NYRB edition translated by Susan Bernofsky.
What a fantastic little Halloween read. This story, written before 1842 when it was first translated into English, is a combination of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "Arachnophobia". It begins with a christening feast in which one of the guests notices an unusual post in the host's home and questions the "grandfather" about it.
The grandfather reluctantly assents and tells a tale that begins six centuries earlier when there w ...more
What a fantastic little Halloween read. This story, written before 1842 when it was first translated into English, is a combination of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "Arachnophobia". It begins with a christening feast in which one of the guests notices an unusual post in the host's home and questions the "grandfather" about it.
The grandfather reluctantly assents and tells a tale that begins six centuries earlier when there w ...more
Oct 29, 2014
Charles Dee Mitchell
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
19th-century-fiction,
horror
Above the mountains rose the sun, shining in limpid majesty down into a welcoming but narrow valley where it woke to joyous life creatures that had been created to take pleasure in the sunshine of their days.
Readers are right to feel they are being set up by this opening sentence. Jeremias Gotthelf’s The Black Spider is one of the great horror tales of the nineteenth century. He maintains his bucolic tone for the third of his novella. There is to be a baptism this day. A feast must be prepared, ...more
A rare lesser release from NYRB Classics, The Black Spider is not, as its back cover blurb would assert, "unforgettably creepy", but instead a historical glimpse into what it would take to get the skin of mid Ninteenth Century readers to crawl. For modern readers, it is instead a brisk, literary morality tale regarding whether peasants should make deals with the devil. SPOILER ALERT: They should not! As you can imagine, much heartbreak, regret, and death ensues. The plot is enjoyable for its sus
...more
Oct 07, 2013
Juniper
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature,
to-acquire
Oct 08, 2013
Gary
marked it as to-read
Oct 19, 2013
Jonathan
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
author-male,
group-read,
lit-german-germany,
own-ebook,
pub-nyrb,
19th-century,
book-type-novel
Apr 23, 2014
Dan
marked it as to-read
May 29, 2014
Tom
marked it as to-read
Mar 29, 2015
Donovan
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
nyrb-classics,
world-lit-germany
Jan 28, 2017
Erica Harmon
marked it as to-read
Apr 08, 2017
Robin Salant
marked it as to-read
May 26, 2017
Leslie
marked it as to-read
