William’s Angel

William’s Angel (1838) is based on the story of William FitzOsbert, who led a popular uprising by the citizens of London in the spring of 1196, and was executed. S. Henry Berthoud goes on to weave a semi-mythical retelling of this incident, that includes the characters of Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart.

This book also includes a collection of ten other stories illustrating how Berthoud became an important pioneer of the conte cruel, and one of the first writers to experiment with that would later be called “stream-of-consciousness” narration.

The love of reckless fantasy that was evident in many of his early works is still evident in these conspicuously Gothic horror stories.