Terrifying Transformations Summary Review by Alexis Easley

Terrifying Transformations is a Horror Anthologies novel by Alexis Easley . Read summary below.

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Terrifying Transformations Summary

“From the summit of the ivy-grown tower, the very rooks, in the midst of their cawing, are scared away by the furious rush and the wild howl with which the Wehr-Wolf thunders over the hallowed ground.” – G. W. M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

This collection brings together fifteen chilling stories of lycanthropy and murder written from 1838 to 1896, all taken from their original appearances in Victorian periodicals and story collections, many of them reprinted here for the first time. This edition includes a new introduction by Alexis Easley and Shannon Scott, explanatory notes, and numerous rare Victorian werewolf illustrations.

This collection contains: “Hugues, the Wer-Wolf” (1838) by Sutherland Menzies, “The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains” (1839) by Frederick Marryat, “A Story of a Weir-Wolf” (1846) by Catherine Crowe, excerpts from Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (1846-47) by George W. M. Reynolds, “Lycanthropy in London; or, The Wehr-Wolf of Wilton-Crescent” (1855) by Dudley Costello, “The Gray-Wolf” (1871) by George MacDonald, “The Were-wolf of the Grendelwold” (1882) by F. Scarlett Potter, “The White Wolf of Kostopchin” (1889) by Gilbert Campbell, “A Pastoral Horror” (1890) by Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Mark of the Beast” (1890) by Rudyard Kipling, “The Were-Wolf” (1890) by Clemence Housman, “Dracula’s Guest” (ca. 1892) by Bram Stoker, “The Other Side: A Breton Legend” (1893) by Eric Stenbock, “Morraha” (1894) by Joseph Jacobs, and “Where There is Nothing, There is God” (1896) by William Butler Yeats. An appendix of contextual materials is also included, featuring nonfiction articles from Victorian periodicals dealing with lycanthropy, Rosamund Marriott Watson’s poem “A Ballad of the Were-wolf” (1891), excerpts from Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-Wolves (1865) and Laurence Housman’s illustrations for Clemence Housman’s The Were-wolf (1896).

READ; The Werewolf M.D. Series: 2 Book Series

Terrifying Transformations Review

SarahLawrence Scott

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting collection with a few gems
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2019

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.

About Alexis Easley Author Of Terrifying Transformations Book

Alexis Easley Author Of Terrifying Transformations Book, She is associate professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her first book, First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, was published in 2004.