the FREEZINE PRESENTS
This OCTOBER, the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction unfurls a brand-new issue dedicated to ressurrecting the dead.
We kick off the October season this Friday, with the fully restored text of Edgar Allan Poe's sordid short story, BERENICE--A TALE. This chilling story originally appeared in the March, 1835 edition of a periodical "Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts," (published out of Richmond, Virginia), called the Southern Literary Messenger.
After the story was criticized for being far too repulsive, Poe himself went on to remove four paragraphs, when he reprinted the story in his own Broadway Journal a decade later, in 1845. Most subsequent reprintings of BERENICE (pronounced to rhyme with "very spicy") have been the edited version (including Creation Books 1999 reprinting of it in their collection DEAD BRIDES).
The Freezine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction is pleased to reprint the full text of the story, as it originally appeared in all its gruesome glory. Stay tuned this Friday, October 8, as BERENICE--A TALE is unveiled once again, as it was originally intended to be.
Then, Monday, October 11, the Freezine will serialize daily, for the first time, Richard Dadd's epic narrative poem ELIMINATION OF A PICTURE & ITS SUBJECT - CALLED THE FELLER'S MASTER STROKE. It is a little-known work which strives to explain in detail all the characters and goings-on captured within his fabulous and most famous painting, THE FAIRY FELLER'S MASTER STROKE. Richard Dadd was an English painter who entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1837--two years after Edgar Allan Poe's BERENICE--A TALE was published in America. He was regarded as one of the most promising talents in the Academy, and was reputed to have been admired by everyone who knew him, as a cheerful and good-natured student. However, after returning from a trip to Europe and the Middle East in 1843, he began to lose his mind. After stabbing his father to death (believing him to be the Devil) he was certified insane, and committed to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam) where he focused on the task of painting The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke over the course of nine years, between 1855 and 1864. The following year, he completed the epic poem ELIMINATION OF A PICTURE & ITS SUBJECT - CALLED THE FELLER'S MASTER STROKE.
The FREEZINE will present the entire work in twelve daily installments, beginning Monday, October 11, for three weeks straight, until its completion on Thursday, October 28.
Meanwhile, watch out each and every remaining Friday this month--when the Freezine continues its exhumation of old and nearly forgotten classic tales of horror, mystery, and imagination.
