Synopses & Reviews
Novelist Emily Gerard (1849-1905) went with her husband, an officer in the Austrian army, to Transylvania for two years in 1883. Then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today a region of Western Romania, Transylvania was little known to readers back in England. Fascinated by the country, Gerard still found it an isolated and alienating place. In the years following, she wrote this full-length account (first published in 1888) as well as several articles on the region, which Bram Stoker used when researching the setting for Dracula. With humour and compassion she describes her encounters with the different nationalities that made up the Transylvanian people: Romanians, Saxons and gypsies. Full of startling anecdotes and written in a novelistic style, her work combines her personal recollections with a detailed account of the landscape, people, superstitions and customs. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=geraem
Synopsis
Gerard's informative and highly readable travelogue about the country and people of Transylvania inspired Bram Stoker when writing Dracula.
Synopsis
A rare first-hand Victorian account of this little-known region, published in 1888 when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a highly engaging, anecdotal style, novelist Emily Gerard combines her personal recollections of with a detailed account of the landscape, people, superstitions and customs.
Table of Contents
Volume 1: 1. Introductory; 2. Historical; 3. Political; 4. Arrival in Transylvania. First impressions; 5. Saxon historical feast. Legend; 6. The Saxons. Character, Education, Religion; 7. Saxon villages; 8. Saxon interiors. Character; 9. Saxon churches and sieges; 10. The Saxon village pastor; 11. The Saxon brotherhoods. Neighbourhoods and village hann; 12. The Saxons. Dress, spinning and dancing; 13. The Saxons. Betrothal; 14. The Saxons. Marriage; 15. The Saxon. Birth and infancy; 16. The Saxon. Death and burial; 17. The Roumanians. Their origin; 18. The Roumanians. Their religion. Popas and churches; 19. The Roumanians. Their character; 20. Roumanian life; 21. Roumanian marriage and morality; 22. The Roumanians. Dancing, songs, music, stories, and proverbs; 23. Roumanian poetry; 24. The Roumanians. Nationality and atrocities; 25. The Roumanians. Death and burial. Vampires and were-wolves; 26. Roumanians superstition. Days and hours. Volume 2: 27. Roumanian superstition continued. Animals, weather, mixed superstitions, spirits, shadows, etc.; 28. Saxon superstition. Remedies, witches, weather-makers; 29. Saxon superstition continued. Animals, plants, days; 30. Saxon customs and dramas; 31. Buried treasures; 32. The Tziganes. Liszt and Lenau; 33. The Tziganes. Their life and occupations; 34. The Tziganes. Humour, proverbs, religion and morality; 35. The gipsy fortune-teller; 36. The Tzigane musician; 37. Gipsy poetry; 38. The Szekels and Armenians; 39. Frontier regiments; 40. Wolves, bears, and other animals; 41. A Roumanian village; 42. A gipsy camp; 43. The Bruckenthals; 44. Still-life at Hermanstadt. A Transylvanian Cranford; 44. Fire and blood. The Hermanstadt murder; 46. The Klausenburg carnival; 47. Journey from Hermanstadt to Kronstadt; 48. Kronstadt; 49. Sinala; 50. Up the mountains; 51. The Bulea See; 52. The Wienerwald. A digression; 53. A week in the pine-region; 54. La Dus and Bistra; 55. A night in the Stina; 56. Farewell to Transylvania. The enchanted garden.