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Paul Raphael Rooney, Festive Reading and Seasonal Terrors: Hugh Conway’s Called Back (1883), Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic, and ‘Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual’, Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 23, Issue 4, October 2018, Pages 556–569, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcy055
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Abstract
Called Back (1883) by Hugh Conway (Frederick John Fargus) was one of the bestselling novels of the late nineteenth century and was first published as an issue of ‘Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual’. This article is an exploration of the reasons driving the novel’s commercial success. Firstly, I position Called Back and the Arrowsmith late-Victorian Christmas annual within the tradition of Victorian festive reading matter by approaching this question through material and periodical culture lenses. I also posit that the commercial fortunes of Called Back benefitted from the topical intertextual connections between its depiction of Siberia and related material circulating contemporaneously in the print media landscape. Secondly, I argue that Called Back was first and foremost a variant on the festive ghost story that employed both hauntings and gothic devices in its narrative, but that it was also a tale well placed to trade upon nostalgia for the golden age of sensation fiction. I additionally suggest that this hybrid quality can illuminate in large part the novel’s post-Victorian obscurity. Finally, the article contends that Fargus’ trio of mid-1880s novels (Called Back (1883), Dark Days (1884), and Slings and Arrows (1885)), written for the Arrowsmith annual title, represents the work of an author aiming to cultivate his status as a novelist associated with a distinct brand of festive reading matter.
