Isaac Crookenden/chapbooks

I recently obtained a copy of Isaac Crookenden's The Horrible Revenge; or, The Monster of Italy which we plan to publish sometime this fall. It is an interesting tale and a wonderful example of how chapbookers utilised various plots from bestselling Gothic novels to create a sensational tale. Crookenden blends the plots of The Monk, The Demon of Sicily and The Mysteries of Udolpho into a cesspool of incest, depravity and filth, strangely attractive to 19th century readers as it is to modern readers.

Isaac Crookenden, along with Sarah Wilkinson, was a major producer of Gothic tales of terror. Nothing is really known about this author, or if that was even his name. He wrote numerous chapbooks including Fatal Secrets; or, Etherlinda de Salmoni, The Italian Banditti; or, The Secret History of Henry and Matilda, The Spectre of the Turret; or, Guolto Castle, The Skeleton; or, the Mysterious Discovery and The Mysterious Murder; or, The Usurper of Naples. His style though is distinctly different from Wilkinson. Where Wilkinson seeks to blend the supernatural with the didactic seamlessly, Crookenden enjoys piling supernatual terrors upon subterranean horrors, the erotic with the religious. The end though is the same, tales of terrors that excite and thrill the reader.