The
Necromancer
by
"Lorenz Flammenberg" (Karl Friedrich Kahlert
)
In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey the central character, Catherine Morland, has read too many Gothic novels, and under their influence imagines the abbey to conceal lurid secrets. She discusses them with her friend:
“Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you; and when
you have finished Udolpho,
we will read The Italian together;
and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”
“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! — What are they all?”
“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocket-book. Castle of Wolfenbach,
Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell,
Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid
Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”
“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”
“Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet
girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them.”
Our friend Nina Zumel
has tracked down the original English version of The Necromancer of the Black Forest, translated by T.
Dutton. She has given its complex publication history on her blog, see below
for link.