Terrifying Transformations: An Anthology of Victorian Werewolf Fiction, 1838-1896

“Terrifying Transformations” is a magnificent compilation of werewolf fiction that should be on the shelf of any fan of gothic horror or devotee of the impact of wolves and werewolves in cultural and popular imagination. Authors Easley’s a s Scott’s introductory commentary and selected bibliographies for each chapter are invaluable for context and as guides for additional reading or research. Scott and Easley also provide an excellent coda of almost 60 pages of non-fiction and poetic and artistic contextual material on lycanthropy and related subjects which significantly enhances the reader’s appreciation of the topic. Truly fascinating is the trans-European settings of the stories, ranging from the Shetland Islands to the Lithuanian marches between Poland and Russia. Most of the fiction authors will probably be unfamiliar, but here also are terrific vignettes from immortal authors of the Victorian era such as Doyle, Kipling, Stoker and Yeats. Highly recommended. Buy this book and take bone chilling runs along the werewolf haunted misty mountains and moors.J.C. (Max) Wilkinson, author of “Forgotten Wolves of Wilkinaland”

I was excited and looking forward to having a collection of werewolf stories. Unfortunately, a majority of the tales are not werewolf stories.

As the subtitle indicates, this is a collection of 19th century British werewolf fiction. Some of the authors are likely to be familiar to modern readers (e.g. Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, and William Butler Years), while others are more obscure. The stories are arranged chronologically, which provides an interesting sense of the development of werewolf stories over time.In the early stories, the werewolves are "real" only about half of the time; the remainder are fakes or stories of false accusations. This adds an interesting tension that is rarely present in more modern werewolf fiction, where the reader generally expects the reality of the werewolves will be revealed to the skeptics eventually.To the extent there is a set of widely shared conventions, there are significant differences from the werewolves of 20th and 21st century pop culture. Lycanthropy is generally not contagious (spread by a bite), but is rather usually the result of a curse or perhaps genetic...on occasion it seems the werewolves are simply a different kind of creature than people, much as we now think of centaurs.Transformations are not generally triggered by the full moon--in a switch from modern sensibilities, moonlit nights are a bit safer, because ordinary humans can see better than on dark nights. In some stories, transformations occur on a specific day on the month, though--perhaps the last day. Midnight is also sometimes a key time.Werewolves are tougher than regular wolves, but not invulnerable, particularly to edged weapons of steel (not silver, as in the later pop mythology). This is key to many stories, as an injury the werewolf sustains in wolf form will also be visible when they are human.One story has a particularly clever gimmick, in that if a werewolf is witnessed while it is transforming in to a wolf, it will forever be stuck in that form.The quality of the writing in the stories varies widely. It is intriguing to find a chapter featuring a werewolf that Bram Stoker apparently considered putting in to Dracula. But the "werewolf" story by Arthur Conan Doyle is out of place in this collection: it features no werewolf, fears of werewolves, or accusations of werewolves.The editors have applied footnotes with a heavy but inconsistent hand. Reasonably common words or references (e.g. to the Emperor Nero) are sometimes provided with definitions via footnotes, while more obscure references are sometimes left unexplained.The introduction to the collection includes many spoilers, and is perhaps best left until after the stories are read.The book includes an appendix with magazine articles and poetry of the period. Unfortunately, this appendix is not labelled in any way except in the table of contents; the material appears just as if it is additional stories. I was quite confused when I first encountered them!Overall, I enjoyed this anthology--I had no idea there was so much werewolf literature from the period, and some of it is quite good. It is not surprising, however, that a collection of this nature is uneven.

The book provides a lovely collection of Victorian werewolf fiction. It has a nice length, and sufficient variation, with thoroughly engaging short stories. It is a great read, and I like to pick a story and dip into it for manageable short reading. Would recommend, and have done to friends.If anything, the cover feels slightly unusual, but that doesn't affect anything, just something I notice as an avid reader and literature student at university.