For the new year, I'm starting a new literary excavation project, which I'll be announcing on Multo soon.
Tales of an Antiquary: chiefly illustrative of the manners, traditions, and remarkable localities of ancient London is a three-volume collection of stories, with a frame, by antiquarian Richard Thomson. Thomson took several pieces that he'd originally published in a defunct periodical, revised and extended them, and wove them into the rambling memoirs of the fictional antiquarian, Sylvanus Beauclerk.
While many of the stories are quite interesting, the work as a whole is tedious and verbose---an opinion shared by contemporary reviewers:
We think the author has been led away by a false idea of conforming to the taste of the times, of writing a popular work, yet so full of his antiquarian lore that the mere story-teller sinks under the weight.
--- Review in The Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, January 26, 1828
So, I've unearthed a few of the stories from the overall work that I really like, and I'll be presenting them here. I'll start with three stories from Volume One. One of them is possibly the first Gothic werewolf story ever published, and it's been reposted over at Roy Glashan's Library. The other two are reposted here at Dark Tales Sleuth, and I've added some light annotations.
I'll be presenting stories from the other volumes soon as well. I hope you enjoy them!