The Crowe Project Has Landed; Or, Some Other Bad Pun

Progress So Far

My efforts to locate, list, and link Catherine Crowe’s short fiction is coming along nicely. Along with backtracking many original publications — some of them anonymous — of tales that were reprinted in collections, I found a few works that seem never to have been reprinted at all. One called “The Bear Steak” (1845), for instance, was probably published one time only. And it’s called “The Bear Steak”!

This is a wild guess, but I’m estimating that I’ve already found 90% of Crowe’s short fiction. I certainly hope that I’ll find new material to add to the list. However, my focus now is on reading what I’ve got and adding summaries and commentaries.

Mysteries So Far

A few mysteries have presented themselves. Why did Crowe retitle so many — but not all — of her tales reprinted in collections, especially in Light and Darkness (1850)? Were those single-publication tales simply weaker than the others? I’ve added some comments on Crowe’s other publications, the book-length stuff, to act as context. If I go too far with these, though, do I lose my focus on her short fiction?

Importantly, how do I differentiate Crowe’s fiction from her “creative non-fiction”? For example, in “Remarkable Female Criminals–The Poisoners of the Present Century” (1847), Crowe narrates as if she’s relating real history, maybe filling in some details with her own conjecture. And maybe that’s exactly what she’s doing! But I treated this piece as fiction because it reappears in Light and Darkness, which she introduces as a volume of “tales” and “stories.” But what do I do with Ghosts and Family Legends (1859)? Here, Crowe presents herself as something of a folklorist, a transcriber of other people’s oral tales. Should we trust this, or is this a clever framing device for her own yarns? If not the latter, she almost certainly takes creative liberties with the original tales (despite her claim to the contrary). One exception in this book is “Eighth Evening,” in which Crowe purports to recount her own ghost hunt. What if this is a product of Crowe’s imagination? I hope not, but…

Suggestions?

The page is developed enough that visitors can see where I’m headed. Given this, I’m very open to suggestions. Please give it a gander, and tell me what you think. It’s here: The Short Fiction of Catherine Crowe.

— Tim