Fantasmagoriana

Fantasmagoriana is a French anthology of German ghost stories, translated anonymously by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès and published in 1812. Most of the stories are from the first two volumes of Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1810–1811), with other stories by Johann Karl August Musäus and Heinrich Clauren.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

It was read by Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairmont at the Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland, during June 1816, the Year Without a Summer, and inspired them to write their own ghost stories, including "The Vampyre" (1819), and Frankenstein (1818), both of which went on to shape the Gothic horror genre.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Title

Fantasmagoriana takes its name from Étienne-Gaspard Robert's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a phantasmagoria show (Template:Langx, from {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "fantasy" or "hallucination", and possibly Template:Langx, "assembly" or "meeting", with the suffix {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) of the late 1790s and early 1800s, using magic lantern projection together with ventriloquism and other effects to give the impression of ghosts (Template:Langx).<ref name="Barber, Theodore 1989">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=Hale>Template:Cite book</ref> This is appended with the suffix {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which "denotes a collection of objects or information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place".<ref>Template:Cite dictionary</ref><ref>Template:Cite dictionary</ref>

The subtitle "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" translates as "anthology of stories of apparitions of spectres, revenants, phantoms, etc.; translated from the German by an amateur".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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).<ref name=Hale />

Stories

Eyriès chose a selection of eight German ghost stories to translate for a French audience. The first story ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}") was from Johann Karl August Musäus' satirical retellings of traditional folk tales {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1786). The next ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}") was by Johann August Apel, first published in Johann Friedrich Kind's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1805), but reprinted in Apel's anthology {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1810). Of the remaining six tales, five were from the first two volumes of Apel and Laun's {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1810–1811), and one ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}") was by the highly popular author Heinrich Clauren, which had been parodied by Apel in one of his {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} stories ("{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", translated as "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}").<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Three editions in three countries and languages over a period of three years shows that these ghost stories were very popular.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

List of stories

Template:Abbr	lang}}	Literal translation	German original	German source	Author
1	lang}}"	The Dumb Love	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 4	Musäus
1	lang}}"	The Family Portraits	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 1	Apel
1	lang}}"	The Death's Head	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 2	Laun
2	lang}}"	The Death Bride	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 2	Laun
2	lang}}"	The Fatal Hour	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 1	Laun
2	lang}}"	The Revenant	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 1	Laun
2	lang}}"	The Grey Chamber	lang}}"	lang}} (newspaper)	Clauren
2	lang}}"	The Black Chamber	lang}}"	lang}}, vol. 2	Apel

Reception

An 1812 review of Fantasmagoriana in the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} concluded that "For a translation from the German this is not too badly written, nor too badly told".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Friedrich Laun quoted this review in his Memoirs, attributing it to Julien Louis Geoffroy, and also mentioned that he owned a copy of Fantasmagoriana.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

References

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