Fantasmagoriana

Title

Fantasmagoriana takes its name from Étienne-Gaspard Robert's Fantasmagorie, a phantasmagoria show (, from fantasme, "fantasy" or "hallucination", and possibly , "assembly" or "meeting", with the suffix -ia) of the late 1790s and early 1800s, using magic lantern projection together with ventriloquism and other effects to give the impression of ghosts (). This is appended with the suffix -iana, which "denotes a collection of objects or information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place".

The subtitle "Recueil d'histoires, d'apparitions, de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc.; Traduit de l'allemand, par un Amateur" translates as "anthology of stories of apparitions of spectres, revenants, phantoms, etc.; translated from the German by an amateur".

The book and its title went on to inspire others by different authors, named in a similar vein: Spectriana (1817), Démoniana (1820) and Infernaliana (1822).

Stories

Eyriès chose a selection of eight German ghost stories to translate for a French audience. The first story ("L'Amour Muet") was from Johann Karl August Musäus' satirical retellings of traditional folk tales Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1786). The next ("Portraits de Famille") was by Johann August Apel, first published in Johann Friedrich Kind's Malven (1805), but reprinted in Apel's anthology Cicaden (1810). Of the remaining six tales, five were from the first two volumes of Apel and Laun's Gespensterbuch (1810–1811), and one ("La Chambre Grise") was by the highly popular author Heinrich Clauren, which had been parodied by Apel in one of his Gespensterbuch stories ("Die schwarze Kammer", translated as "La Chambre Noire"). Fantasmagoriana was partly translated into English in 1813 by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson as Tales of the Dead, containing the first five stories (see list, below); thus three of the five stories from Gespensterbuch. Three editions in three countries and languages over a period of three years shows that these ghost stories were very popular.

List of stories

Reception

An 1812 review of Fantasmagoriana in the Journal de l'Empire concluded that "For a translation from the German this is not too badly written, nor too badly told". Friedrich Laun quoted this review in his Memoirs, attributing it to Julien Louis Geoffroy, and also mentioned that he owned a copy of Fantasmagoriana.

References

References

1. Guignard, Eric J.. (2011–2023). "Fantasmagoriana Deluxe".
2. (2008). "The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Œdipus". Broadview Editions.
3. Barber, Theodore. (1989). "Phantasmagorical Wonders: The Magic Lantern Ghost Show in Nineteenth-Century America". Indiana University Press.
4. Hale, Terry. (1994). "Tales of the Dead". The Gothic Society.
5. (2012). "-iana". [[HarperCollins]].
6. (2012). "-ana". [[HarperCollins]].
7. Sir John Soane's Museum. "Fantasmagoriana, ou recueil d'histoires d'apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc.; traduit de l'allemand, par un amateur.".
8. (July 1915). "Ze Den Quellen Der ''Fantasmagoriana''". O. R. Reisland.
9. van Woudenberg, Maximiliaan. (2014). "The Variants and Transformations of Fantasmagoriana: Tracing a Travelling Text to the Byron-Shelley Circle". Romanticism.
10. (29 June 1812). "Varietes: ''Fantasmagoriana''". Le Normant.
11. Schulze, Friedrich August. (1837). "Memoiren von Friedrich Laun". Appun.