Things Learned While Looking Up Other Things: Gothic Edition (An Homage to Sydney J. Harris) By Julia Buckley

JENN McKINLAY: My gateway from the children's section of the library to the adult side was Victoria Holt, specifically Mistress of Mellyn. So, it was with great delight that I discovered a gothic  mystery series had burst upon the scene written by Julia Buckley. Here she is to tell us all about it!

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JULIA BUCKLEY: Back in the 1970s I used to read the Chicago Sun-Times, to which my family had a subscription. Since I was a kid, I tended to read the Funnies, the horoscopes, and the movie reviews first, but I did enjoy many of the columnists.

One of their greatest writers was a man named Sydney J. Harris, a great 20^thCentury writer and thinker who studied philosophy at the University of Chicago while also getting his start, as a teenager, working for the Chicago Daily News. When that paper became defunct, Harris began writing for the Sun-Times.

At one point he wrote a column called “Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things.” These pieces were created long before the Internet, and Harris’s column alerted me to the idea of just how much information was out there. Generally these pieces were whimsical, but Harris, a philosopher at heart, had much to say about the human condition.

Although Sydney J. Harris died in 1986, his writing, particularly that column, has stayed with me. 

I’ve been doing some research into the Gothic tradition since my books, beginning with A Dark and Stormy Murder, are small and cozy homages to that tradition, especially to the great Gothic suspense writers of the post-war 20^thCentury—people like Mary Stewart (on whom Camilla Graham is loosely based), Phyllis A. Whitney, Victoria Holt. But before those women spun their tales of magic and mystery, there were their Gothic forbears: Ann Radcliffe in the late 18^thCentury; the Brontes and Mary Shelley in the 19^thCentury, Daphne du Maurier in the early 20^thCentury. There is much to say about the Gothic tradition, these writers in particular, writing in general.

So, inspired by Harris, I’m going to share some of the most interesting tidbits of information from some of my latest bits of research (and oh does the Internet make this easy! Harris searched through books).

·      Gothic fiction (aka Gothic horror) emerged from Gothic architecture. Many of the works of the early Gothics like Horace Walpole (the originator), and later Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, even Dickens with A Christmas Carol, set their works in buildings with Gothic elements. Gothic structure emerged from Gothic structures!

·      Most know that Poe, a master of the Gothic, wrote the first American detective story, creating an archetype for many works that followed. However, Poe also wrote science fiction! In his story “The Unparalled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” his main character took a balloon ride to the moon. 

·      The Bronte children were all highly creative: the sisters, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne, each wrote novels, and their brother, Branwell, was an artist. The deaths of many of their loved ones may well have contributed to the gloomy, Gothic tone of their writing. Three of them died around the age of 30, and Charlotte died at 38. The family’s home, the parsonage at Haworth, is now a museum in Yorkshire. 

·      Mary Stewart, before marrying the geologist Frederick Stewart, was Mary Rainbow. While I thought I had read all of her works (many times), I find two listed on Wikipedia that I have never heard of: The Castle of Danger(1981) and The Wind off the Small Isles(1968) I will be reading them both this summer.

·      Phyllis A. Whitney was born in Japan, and her middle name “Ayame,” means “iris” in Japanese. Whitney was well-traveled, but as a young married woman just beginning to write, she lived here in Chicago. She worked at bookstores and at the Chicago Public Library while she honed her craft. Later she became a book reviewer for the Chicago Sunand the Philadelphia Inquirer. Whitney lived to be 104 years old. She told the NYT: “I always told myself that when I get old I’ll reread all my books, but I never seem to get old.” She was seventy-nine at the time.

·     Eleanor Hibbert, according to Wikipedia, wrote as “Jean Plaidy for fictionalized history of European royalty; Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga.” She wrote more than 200 books which sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and were translated into 20 languages. Hibbert was English but loved to escape cold English winters by taking cruises to warm places. She died on a cruise ship, at age 86, and was buried at sea somewhere between Greece and Egypt.

·     Daphne Du Maurier’s REBECCA (set in Cornwall, like most of her works), has never gone out of print. Du Maurier grew more reclusive as her fame grew. She did not like being called a “romantic novelist,” as she felt she her books did not fit into the genre. She lived in Cornwall for her whole life, for many years renting an estate called “Menabilly,” on which the famous Manderley is partially based.

·     Common criteria for Gothic fiction include a setting on a spooky estate or old castle; a theme of death or decay (Poe was a master of this); some element of the supernatural, perhaps involving curses or prophecies; overwrought emotion, especially in the heroine; a domineering male figure; romance; closed doors/secret passages; images of blood or the grotesque; an overall mood of gloom or horror—just to name a few! Some sites list up to 100 Gothic elements.

·     Sub-note: In my Gothic series, I make use of at least seven of those motifs! Perhaps you can find them.

I could go on and on with interesting Gothic details, and I wonder what Sydney J. Harris would make of the Internet age. Oh, and here’s one last “thing I learned” while looking up Harris himself:

·     Sydney J. Harris was on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.   J

What about you, Reds and readers, what did you learn while looking up something else?

 Here's a glimpse at the latest writer's apprentice mystery, featuring Lena London: 

Writer's apprentice Lena London is 

happily working on a new collaboration 

with her idol and bestselling suspense 

novelist and friend Camilla Graham, but 

her joy is short-lived when a dark cloud 

descends upon the quaint town of Blue 

Lake, Indiana...

Lena's best friend, Allison, is in a panic. On a walk in the woods by her home, Allison discovers the body of her mail carrier, an argumentative man who recently had a falling out with Allison's husband. Lena quickly realizes that Allison has nothing to worry about as the murder weapon points to a different suspect altogether: Lena's embattled boyfriend, Sam West.

Sam was cleared of his wife's murder when she was found alive, and now someone is trying to make him look guilty again. Surveillance video of a break-in at his house shows a shadowy figure trying to incriminate him by stealing the weapon from his desk. Lena and Camilla work on a suspect list, but a threatening note and a violent intrusion at Graham House prove that the devious killer has decided to write them into the plot.

Julia Buckley is a Chicago writer. She has two series with Berkley Prime Crime, along with a variety of mystery novels available on Kindle. Her newest release, DEATH IN DARK BLUE, is now available in bookstores and online.

Her hobbies are reading, writing, binge-watching tv series on Netflix, and hanging out with her husband, sons, four cats and one giant Labrador.

Visit Julia at her website, JuliaBuckley.com or her Facebook page, Julia Buckley Mystery Novels, or see her on Twitter @juliabucks. You can also explore her inspirations for Blue Lake on her Pinterest page, or follow her on Instagram at jellenbuckey. 

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