Thank you for visiting the site for Arms, Angels, Epitaphs, and Bones: An Anthology of Graveyard Poetry.
The graveyard school of poetry, which spanned most of the 18th century, in a sense, paved the way for the early Gothic novels. Could we say that Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto(1764) might never have been without these intrepid poets? Perhaps not. While many authors following Walpole utilized Edmund Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) as a kind of practical blueprint for all things creepy and awe-inspiring, it wasn't until Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796) that the literary worship of decrepitude practiced by these poets--a prelude to horror as we know it--made it's way into the novel form.
This chapbook salutes those early dabblers in the grotesque. Poems featured include A Night-piece on Death (1722) by Thomas Parnell, The Grave (1743) by Robert Blair,Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray, A Night Piece (mid-late 18th c.) by James MacPherson, The Dream (1825*) by David Macbeth Moir, andLines Written in Wilford Churchyard, On Recovery From Sickness (late 18th c.) Henry Kirke White, with accompanying photographs from Highgate Cemetery (London), Pere Lachaise Cemetery (Paris), Lansdown Cemetery (Bath), and Haworth Cemetery (Bronte Parsonage, Yorkshire).
The font is Baskerville Old Face, designed by John Baskerville in 1768. It is approximately 40 pages (we are still in the layout stages).
This chapbook will have a very limited print-run of perhaps 50, and are available for $10.00 ($8.00 + $2.00 for shipping; please see PayPal button at the right). If you would rather send a check (payable to Kriscinda Meadows), please send it with your mailing address to:
Babu Bertha Press
749 Hazelwood Ave. #3.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
* The one foray into the 19th century that I just couldn't resist.
* The one foray into the 19th century that I just couldn't resist.
