The stories presented in Our Lady of Hate are drawn from a decade of work by a hitherto un-noted British female writer, Catherine Lord, whose stories were placed in various (mostly small) publications between 1892 and 1901, the year of the author’s death. In his introduction, editor Johnny Mains describes the collection as ‘pure literary entertainment’, which seems an appropriate phrase. It is a book to be read on a rainy day, with English tea and a fireside to hand.

Be warned that there is nothing truly monstrous or unusual within, yet Lord’s stories are well-written, often entertaining, and occasionally more wry than expected. Sometimes she even manages to surprise, though many of the pieces are simply windows into that classic Victorian story-world of orphans, small inheritances, early widowhood, death in childbirth, and unrequited love; of uncles variously beneficent or curmudgeonly, of turreted rooms and outdated values.

As for the supernatural, it is present, but far more often as an undercurrent than anything – hints of frightful incidents and influences which may turn out to be rather mundane. Lord suggests more than she details, only very occasionally launching the reader into actual otherworldly waters. Thus rambling manor houses, dark moorlands and sad deaths are often exactly what they seem, without any malign spiritual hand behind them, despite characters’ fears – upon which she frequently plays. More people fear ghosts in here than encounter them. And there is a certain pleasure in trying to anticipate ‘solutions’ to odd events or circumstances, but don’t expect many unrefuted spirits.

Of the twenty one stories within, we most enjoyed:

‘The Fell-Thorpe Ghost’ – an ‘Is there or isn’t there?’ tale.

‘A Singular Experience’ – a little meditation on a man’s scary situation.

‘Loyale Je Serais’ – because it just doesn’t go where you expect.

‘Our Lady of Hate’ – though more for the imagery than the plot.

‘My Uncle’s Pictures’ – an amusing tale of family and fraud.

Quite what Lord herself thought, in any social or psychological sense, remains as obscure as the writer has been until now. She is far more the product of mid-Victorian sensibilities than of the relative social tumult which was building at the turn of the century. There is no incipient struggle for suffrage, or acid commentary on the struggle between the sexes and a changing society – relationships may be ‘perfect matches’, tragic, unrequited love affairs, dutiful inevitabilities, or simply ill-judged. She seems, in essence, in favour of what you might expect – a loving relationship between a man and a woman within the boundaries of ‘normal’ society standards. There are decent step-mothers, faithful men, misguided lovers and even an alcoholic wife thrown in, but little demonising.

Johnny Mains has done an excellent job of locating and gathering together Lord’s output, and a service to readers, like ourselves, who are fascinated by the late Victorian and Edwardian literary period. Which is to be expected, of course, given his previous editorial work on more explicitly supernatural tales of the time – and the introduction to Our Lady of Hate also gives a fine feel of what it was like to track down and identify these obscure stories, a consummate piece of detection.

Our Lady of Hate (Noose & Gibbet Publishing) is due out December 2020, and pre-orders can be placed by emailing johnnymains@outlook.com Copies are £20 + £3 postage (£10 overseas postage because of rising international charges).

For those who seek directly supernatural stories from other, mostly forgotten, female authors, we do recommend Johnny Mains’ anthologies, available in print and Kindle:

A Suggestion of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction by Women 1854-1900 (Black Shuck Books)

a suggestion of ghosts

An Obscurity of Ghosts: Further Tales of the Supernatural by Women, 1876 – 1903 (Black Shuck Books)

an obscurity of ghosts

Also available in Kindle now is Mains’ Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories:

The Pan Book of Horror Stories ran for 30 volumes between 1959 and 1989, entertaining and terrifying thousands of readers in equal measure. In this tribute to the classic horror series, award-winning editor and historian Johnny Mains has commissioned new pieces from some of Pan’s most respected authors, printed here alongside selected stories from the original volumes.

back from the dead