Ghost Stories

I am once again in a ghost story mood. Yesterday I read The Shell of Sense by Olivia Howard Dunbar, page 69 of Harper's Magazine, Volume 18, December 1908, available at Google Books. It is an interesting story. The spirit of a woman, bound to earth by jealousy and selfishness, struggles against dealing vengeance. It is a very short story, well worth the time to read it.

Now I am in the midst of reading The Shadow World by Hamlin Garland, also available at Google Books, as well as at Project Gutenberg. I am not far into it, and it is unclear to me whether it is a novel or a fictionalized account of what the author purports to be real experiences. At any rate, it is entertaining. There is a woman who is the 19th century version of The Ghost Whisperer. What role she will play in the book as a whole is unclear to me at this point, but so far it is an enjoyable read.

No interlibrary loan

Unfortunately, no one has a copy available for loan of the book by the Russian psychiatrist Segalin concerning his diagnosis of Tolstoy.

Tolstoy and epilepsy

I am trying through an interlibrary loan request to borrow a copy of G. V. Segalin's Европатология личности и творчества Льва Толстого (Yevropatologiya lichnosti i tvorchestva Lva Tolstogo), mentioned in Alexander Boot's book, God and Man According to Tolstoy. Segalin is said to have concluded that Tolstoy suffered from "affective epilepsy" characterized by fainting, delirium, hallucinations, and amnesia. What is unclear from what I was able to read in Boot's book in a preview view at Google Books is whether Segalin made this diagnosis after seeing Tolstoy personally, or whether Segalin was relying on the accounts of others. Fingers crossed that the interlibrary loan comes through with a copy for me to peruse - and that my Russian-English dictionary is up to the challenge of a lot of medical terminology.

Did Tolstoy have epilepsy?

Leo Tolstoy has been an interest of mine since 1967. Over the years I have read extensively about his life and works. I published an article in an early number of the Tolstoy Studies Journal related to the chronology of his life and work as compiled by N. N. Gusev; and from 1995 to 2009 (when Geocities ceased to exist) I maintained on online library of digital versions of some of Tolstoy's works, most of which I digitized myself.

Having recently discovered that all 90 volumes of the Jubilee edition of the Complete Works of Tolstoy (in Russian) are now available online, I have recently returned to my research into the life and work of this great author.

A Google Books search turned up a book called God and Man According to Tolstoy by Alexander Boot which states that Tolstoy is believed to have been an epileptic. This was a surprise to me, and I have begun researching this assertion. What I have learned so far is that there is some disagreement as to this diagnosis of Tolstoy being epileptic.

The One Who Looked On

I have discovered another gem, a wonderful novella titled The One Who Looked On by Frances Frederica Montresor. The story begins in Ireland, moves to London, focusing on Susie who never married and never had children of her own, but who was filled with love to share with children who needed someone to love them. It's a wonderful story. Available at Google Books as a free pdf download.

Not All the King's Men

Not All the King's Men: A Novel of Washington Society
by Katherine Elwes Thomas
New York, The Cassell Publishing Co., 1896
Available for free download at Google Books.

Helen Oglethorp Lyman, a widow living in a beautiful home on Washington's Farragut Square, learns that her fortune has diminished to the point where she must make a dramatic retrenchment. She plots her strategy for avoiding this disaster.

This short novel is the best Washington society novel I have read to date. The descriptions of houses, fashions, and social setting are wonderful to read.

Bookmark - Sir Christopher Wren Steeple

Steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow
London
Sir Christopher Wren
1677