The Dons and Mr. Dickens: The Strange Case of the Oxford Christmas Plot by William J. Palmer

Author:William J. Palmer [Palmer, William J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626817357
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

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*The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole is generally considered the first major work to signal the romantic subgenre of the “Gothic novel.”

Gothic Death

December 2, 1853—After Midnight

The Meadow Buildings of Christ Church College. The scientist’s rooms in the dead of a winter’s night. The moon full and bright through the leaded casement, but disappearing in and out of the scudding clouds. Bright moonlight chased by utter blackness across Christ Church meadows and over the dark waters of the wintry Thames.

The laboratory. Beakers and jars and burners and tubes. Vials and powders and liquids and crystals. A rough bookcase with the secrets of chemistry handy to the reach between the covers of its tattered tenants. Strange racks of wood and hammocked rope for the storage in slings of fragile containers. A laboratory out of Mrs. Shelley’s Gothic tale.*

A large worktable just below the fickle light of the high casement. That table cluttered with books and strewn papers (the scientist’s notes on his latest experiment?) and glass slides and glass beakers. That table’s centre commanded by the familiar angularity of a microscope and the familiar bulk of a large metal water pitcher.

The scientist sitting at the table consulting his copious notes.

A dark figure moving silently through the low doorway. A mere shadow. A trick of light passing through the membrane of the clouds.

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