deservedly obscure (as, indeed, almost all disposable popular fiction soon becomes). For years they were assumed to be not simply fiction, but figments from a novel; but enterprising scholars managed to unearth copies of the original "shilling shockers."Eliza Parsons was a prolific and popluar writer at the end of the eighteenth century. Her works are generally forgotten, now, but two of them -- including THE CASTLE OF WOLFENBACH -- were immortalized in that list of seven "Horrid Novels" Jane Austen slipped into NORTHANGER ABBEY.

Hide more