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Mrs. Henry Wood was an extremely popular and prolific author, who as well as some forty novels produced numerous short stories, many of which appeared in Bentley's Miscellany or Argosy, the magazine whose editorship she took over in 1866, and which she subsequently ran with the help of her son Charles, being herself one of its major contributors.
The majority of her stories were set in Worcestershire and featured a character by the name of Johnny Ludlow. The very first Johnny Ludlow story appeared in the Argosy magazine in January 1868. Shaving the ponies tails is a light-hearted story about a childish prank. It introduces the setting for the subsequent very successful and long running series. The main characters are introduced, but some, especially Squire Todhetly, are not quite as they appear later. There is a separate page describing and listing the Johnny Ludlow series.
Of the other short stories on this site, The self-convicted is the earliest, first appearing in the New Monthly Magazine in 1853. It's a simple story of a man falsely accused of murder, but dramatically proved innocent--a very typical Mrs. Henry Wood plot. The mail-cart robbery, which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1856, again involves an innocent man falsely accused, this time of robbery. In this story another of Mrs. Henry Wood's favourite devices, the significant dream, plays a part. Mr. Castonel (1857) is much stronger, including not only a dream, but a dummy drawer, poison, a mysterious stranger, bigamy and multiple murder. In Mr. North's dream (1868) a nocturnal vision brings about the dénouement of a story about a banished nephew who eventually makes good.
(With thanks for additional information from Michael Flowers).
Follow the links to the full text of each of the following short stories. These can be read online or downloaded free of charge:
The files are in XHTML like this page. Please note the file size as it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read them online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option.
Follow these links to find introductions and selected stories from books in the Johnny Ludlow series:-
Page created 20 November 2002 and last
updated 9 March 2004
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