{"id":3843,"date":"2017-03-26T21:32:37","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T21:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2017-04-01T10:56:39","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T10:56:39","slug":"victorian-voices-seven-writers-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/victorian-voices-seven-writers-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"VICTORIAN VOICES – SEVEN WRITERS FROM THE DARK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you hear the past speaking to you? Today we feature notable Victorian-born authors of horror, ghost stories, detective fiction and fantasy, in rare audio appearances. We looked for genuine recordings where, if possible, they spoke about writing or writers. Our selection of Victorian Voices runs from G K Chesterton<\/strong> to J R R Tolkien<\/strong>, with rather different guests at both the start and the end.<\/p>\n

\"victorian<\/a><\/p>\n

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But wait! There are actually seven voices plus one below. During the selection process, we noticed that the recordings used were all of men. We’re sharp like that. So we decided to add someone who wasn’t a Victorian or a man, whose contribution to weird fiction is sometimes overlooked: the late Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It’s easy enough to find modern recordings of writers. Even the greydog<\/em> himself has done the occasional podcast or audio interview. But the deep past is strange, and surviving audio can be fragmentary and rare. Fascinated by listening to people born in the Victorian era speaking, we therefore start with something\u00a0 which has no connection with writing or horror, except for the horror of war. Feel free to skip if you want to get on to the writers.<\/p>\n

The Bugle’s Bright Blast<\/h1>\n

The recording which follows is a demonstration of how close we are to the past in many ways. It was an accidental find some time ago, when researching military history. And it gives us a link which goes even further back than Victorian voices or the existence of voice recording technology \u2013 to the time of King George III. A bit of context, if you like.<\/p>\n

\"one<\/a>
one of the waterloo bugles, c. household cavalry museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A number of bugles survive from the Battle of Waterloo, fought on the 18th<\/sup> of June, 1815. The instrument pictured above, for example, was blown by 16-year-old John Edwards, who was duty trumpeter of the day. It sounded the charge for the Household Brigade on the day.<\/p>\n

So what, you say? Well, the first of our Victorian voices is from a recording which was made on 2nd<\/sup> August 1890, and reported in the Pall Mall Gazette<\/em> of August of that year.<\/p>\n

“I am trumpeter Lanfried. One of the surviving trumpeters, of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. I am now going to sound a bugle, that was sounded at Waterloo, and sound the charge was sounded at Balaclava on the very same bugle, the 25th of October, 1854.”<\/em><\/p>\n