Medusa’s Daughters
Edited by Theodora Goss
“Dr. Theodora Goss has gathered a collection of strengths: gothic tales of women, by women, some of which had been lost to time and forgetting...creating a gothic landscape that is at once timeless and timely, filled with brilliant, angry, determined women who leap right off the page.”
—Fran Wilde, Nebula-winning author of Updraft, World Fantasy, Hugo, and Locus finalist, and
Director of the Genre MFA for writers at Western Colorado University.
FIC027040 FICTION / Gothic
LCO019000 LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
FIC004000 FICTION / Classics
Print: $16.00, EPUB $9.99
Print ISBN: 978-1-941360-36-1
Digital ISBN: 978-1-941360-37-8
Publication Date: March 31, 2020
Publicity Contact: Feliza Casano, publicity@lanternfishpress.com
After a period of decline, Gothic literature underwent a revival at the end of the 1800s. As the century turned, women writers such as Vernon Lee, Mary Coleridge, and Graham R. Thomson left an indelible mark on fantasy and horror literature. Like Medusa herself, their poetry and short stories embody the very essence of magic and monstrosity. But be warned, dear reader: when you gaze upon the face of a monster . . . well, the ordinary world may never look quite the same again.
Curated and annotated by award-winning fantasy author and Victorianist Theodora Goss, this collection of rare and strange gems serves as a tantalizing sampler of work by fin-de-siècle women writers, whose legacy still echoes in the speculative fiction we know and love today.
Photo credit: Matthew Stein Photography
About the Editor
Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy and Locus Award-winning author of the short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting (2006), Songs for Ophelia (2014), and Snow White Learns Witchcraft (2019), as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), and sequels European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018) and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (2019). She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into twelve languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.
Talking Points for Booksellers & Librarians
Perfect for feminist readers of classic British and American literature
Selections of short fiction and poetry give an introduction to speculative fiction by women writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Suitable for academic use in courses on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century literature, gender and sexuality in literature, and the history of speculative fiction/horror
Praise for Medusa’s Daughters
“Medusa’s Daughters is a sinister Gothic delight, full of unrepentant witches, ghosts, dryads, and changelings. Goss is an expert guide to the strange codes of fin-de-siècle patriarchy and the bold, monstrous women who defied them.”
—Barbara Barrow, author of The Quelling
“With Medusa's Daughters, brilliant scholar, poet, and storyteller, Dr. Theodora Goss has gathered a collection of strengths: gothic tales of women, by women, some of which had been lost to time and forgetting. In doing so, she's brought us back to the short stories and poetry of Vernon Lee, Elinor Wylie, and (a personal favorite) Charlotte Mew. Dr. Goss has further interwoven these stories and poems with short stories by Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, and Kate Chopin, creating a gothic landscape that is at once timeless and timely, filled with brilliant, angry, determined women who leap right off the page.”
—Fran Wilde, Nebula-winning author of Updraft, World Fantasy, Hugo, and Locus finalist, and
Director of the Genre MFA for writers at Western Colorado University.
Complete List of Source Materials for Medusa’s Daughters
Ethna Carbery (Anna MacManus) [died 1902], “The Love-Talker” and “Niamh,” The Four Winds of Eirinn: Poems, M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd. and Jas. Duffy and Co., Ltd., 1906 [Ireland].
Willa Cather [died 1947], “Princess Baladina—Her Adventure,” The Home Monthly VI, August 1896 (under the pseudonym Charles Douglass) [United States].
Nora Hopper Chesson [died 1906], “A Drowned Girl to Her Lover,” The Bodley Head, 1896 [United Kingdom]. “Hertha,” Aquamarines, Richard Grant, 1902 [United Kingdom].
Kate Chopin [died 1904], “ An Egyptian Cigarette,” Vogue Magazine, April 19, 1902 [United States].
Mary Coleridge [died 1907], “The Witch,” “The White Women,” and “The Other Side of a Mirror,” Poems by Mary E. Coleridge, Elkin Matthews, 1908 [United Kingdom].
Olive Custance [died 1944], “The White Witch,” Rainbows, The Bodley Head, 1902 [United Kingdom]. “The Changeling,” The Inn of Dreams, The Bodley Head, 1911 [United Kingdom].
Mary Wilkins Freeman [died 1930], “Luella Miller,” The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903 [United States].
Charlotte Perkins Gilman [died 1935], “When I Was a Witch,” The Forerunner I.7, May 1910 [United States]. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” The New England Magazine, January 1892 [United States].
May Kendall [died 1943], “A Castle in the Air,” Songs from Dreamland, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894 [United Kingdom]. “The Mermaid’s Chapel,” Dreams to Sell, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1887 [United Kingdom].
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) [died 1935], “Dionea,” Hauntings: Fantastic Stories, William Heinemann, 1890 [United States].
Charlotte Mew [died 1928], “The Farmer’s Bride” and “The Changeling,” The Farmer’s Bride, The Poetry Bookshop, 1921 [United Kingdom]. “A White Night,” Temple Bar, January 1, 1903 [United Kingdom].
E. Nesbit [died 1924], “Man-Size in Marble,” Grim Tales, A. D. Innes & Co., 1893 [United Kingdom]. “The Princess and the Hedge-Pig,” The Magic World, MacMillan and Co., 1912 [United Kingdom].
Dollie Radford [died 1920], “A Ballad of Victory,” A Ballad of Victory and Other Poems by Dollie Radford, Alston Rivers, 1907 [United Kingdom].
Lizette Woodworth Reese [died 1935], “The Singer,” A Branch of May, Cushings and Bailey, 1887 [United States]. “All Hallows Night,” The Selected Poems of Lizette Woodworth Reese, George H. Doran Company, 1926 [United States].
A. Mary F. Robinson [died 1944], “The Dryads,” The Collected Poems, Narrative and Lyrical, of A. Mary F . Robinson, T. Fisher Unwin, 1902 [United Kingdom].
Dora Sigerson Shorter [died 1918], “The Watcher in the Wood” and “The White Witch,” The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1907 [United States].
Katherine Tynan [died 1931], “The Children of Lir” and “Nymphs,” Twenty One Poems by Katharine Tynan: S elected by W. B. Yeats, Dun Emer Press, 1907 [Ireland].
Rosamund Marriott Watson [died 1911], “Ballad of the Bird-Bride” and “The Orchard of the Moon,” The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson, The Bodley Head, 1912 [United Kingdom].
Edith Wharton [died 1937], “Bewitched,” Here and Beyond, George J. McLeod Limited, 1926 [Canada]. “The Hermit and the Wild Woman,” The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908 [United States].
Virginia Woolf [died 1941], “A Haunted House,” Monday or Tuesday, The Hogarth Press, 1921 [United Kingdom].
Elinor Wylie [died 1928], “ Atavism,” “The Fairy Goldsmith,” and “Madman’s Song,” Nets to Catch the Wind, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921 [United States].