This episode, Mike and Will grab their literary toboggans and gallop joyously out into the snow, only to be hit in the face by a terrifying fictional snowball in the form of Louisa Baldwin’s The Real and the Counterfeit!

Big thanks as ever to Debbie Wedge for providing the readings for this episode. Looking for a last-minute Christmas gift to please the M.R. James fan in your life? Why not head over to Debbie’s Redbubble store and pick up an awesome Jamesian Wallop, Barchestering, or No Diggin’ ‘Ere t-shirt?

Show notes:

1. More on Louisa Baldwin in our last episode
   We covered The Weird of the Walfords back in the summer, and included a lot more biographical details about Louisa Baldwin.
2. Long Galleries (wikipedia)
   A lot of the action in this story takes place in a long gallery, a popular architectural feature of many stately homes in England.
3. George’s banjo (authorama.com)
   Like Lawley in this story, George in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat was also a keen banjo player, much to the displeasure of his friends. Similarly, in Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie’s insistence on playing the banjolele is what finally drives Jeeves to leave Bertie’s service (albeit temporarily).
4. Other haunted abbeys (nearlyknowledgeablehistory.blogspot.com)
   In this episode, Mike mentions a number of old houses in England that are, like Stonecroft, said to be haunted by ghostly monks.
5. Tobogganing at Funchal (carreirosdomonte.com)
   The city of Funchal in Madeira is famous for providing toboggan-like basket rides from the Mount Church on the hill, down into the town.

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Who would win in a fight between a man and a bed? Find the answer to this question and more in our new episode on The Weird of the Walfords by Louisa Baldwin! Also, if you like emotionally-repressed Victorian husbands, you will not leave disappointed.

Show notes:

• Louisa Baldwin (1845–1925) (Wikipedia)
  Louisa was a member of an illustrious family who included Rudyard Kipling and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
• ‘The Shadow on the Blind, and Other Stories’ (Google Books)
  You can read this story and others form the same volume on Google Books.
• Royal beds in English history (wikipedia)
  There are a number of stately homes in England with similar legends about royalty spending a night in a specific bed, for example Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire.
• Wyrd (wikipedia) 
  The ‘Weird’ of the Walfords is actually a ‘wyrd’, an old English term meaning fate or destiny.

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This episode we speak with two experts to better understand Eleanor Scott and her story Randall’s Round, Dr Vicky Margree and Prof Dan Orrells. We discuss what’s known about Eleanor Scott, her time at Oxford University in the early 1900s and the role of gender, folklore and imperialism in her writing.

Vicky is a specialist in literary fiction and feminist theory. Her book British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860-1930: Our Own Ghostliness looks at stories by Margaret Oliphant, Charlotte Riddell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edith Nesbit, Alice Perrin, Eleanor Scott and Violet Hunt.

Dan focuses on the history of the interpretation of classical literature. He’s interested in the Greeks and Romans in the Victorian imagination, including how these inspired Gothic and ghostly tales at the turn of the 20th century.  He co-edited with Vicky a study of Richard Marsh, a fascinating late-Victorian author who wrote about “shape-shifting monsters, morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life.”

In our conversation we learn more about the folklore revival, Edward B Tylor’s ideas about primitive cultures and notions of “survivals” amd the experience of women at Oxford and Cambridge (Dan recommends the Dorothy L Sayers novel Gaudy Night!).

Massive thank you to Vicky and Dan for being such engaging and insightful guests and sharing their expertise with us!  If you want to read ahead, we’ll be back next time with The Weird of the Walfords by Louisa Baldwin.

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