Reviews for Sisters Of Gore

The average rating for Sisters Of Gore based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-21 00:00:00 Gregory Swan Another fine anthology of Romantic melodrama, a good complement for Cox's Six Gothic Dramas, 1789-1825. It fills in a truly forgotten corner of theatre history. Not only are nineteenth-century melodramas never produced today, but all the plays in this collection are by women writers, who are doubly forgotten. Two years into a PhD in Romantic literature, and I had never heard of a single one of the authors in this collection. One of the playwrights, "Miss Burke," is so obscure her first name is now forgotten. Likewise, almost no facts are known of Elizabeth Polack. Four of the plays in the collection are of high literary quality. Harriet Lee's The Mysterious Marriage is a classic gothic play, with a scheming Byronic antihero, gloomy castle, ghost and poison-soaked plot of incest and intrigue. Jane Scott's The Old Oak Chest was, claims Franceschina, the most popular melodrama of the nineteenth century, and its exciting, action-packed plot is well handled. Catherine Gore was a truly great playwright, and her two contributions, The Bond (a version of the Faust-myth) and Dacre of the South, are remarkable for their political and philosophical themes, and the quality of the poetry. I think students would enjoy studying any of these plays, and they would have some chance of coming alive on the stage today. If this book succeeds in canonising them, it would be a fine thing. As regards the other three plays, Burke's The Ward of the Castle is really hack-work, while Harvey's Raymond de Percy and Polack's St. Clair of the Isles are fun swashbuckling affairs that don't quite have the compelling depth of the other plays in the volume. They are, of course, interesting as evidence of nineteenth-century theatrical tastes, if that is one of your interests. As a scholarly reader, the book does leave somewhat to be desired. The introduction is short and not particularly informative. The headnotes to the plays are likewise overly concise, and the endnotes are strangely and inconveniently formatted. The two Gore plays have no notes at all. These flaws are the main reason I give this book one less star than Cox's. From a scholarly perspective, this book is an essential little volume, which scholars of Romanticism should certainly read. From a readerly (or Good-readerly) perspective, it is a good rather than a great book.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-09-02 00:00:00 ron jaworski A very useful book for those studying literature. Contains many analyses of Emma using several theoretical approaches.