Mansion of Gloom: The Unsettling Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’
Edgar Allan Poe’s atmospheric tale of madness and premature burial has intrigued and disconcerted readers ever since it first appeared in 1839. In the twentieth century, it attracted interpretations from all fields of artistic creativity: film, television, theatre, opera, music, literature and art.
There have been around twenty film and television adaptations: European filmmakers, from the aesthete Impressionist Jean Epstein in 1928 to schlockmeister Jess Franco in the 1980s, American directors Roger Corman and Curtis Harrington, Czech animation wizard Jan Svankmajer, and British directors such as Ken Russell and Ivan Barnett, whose 1946 adaptation was filmed at a Hastings guesthouse which at the time was the home of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. Roderick Usher has been played by many eminent actors including Martin Landau, Denholm Elliott, Oliver Reed and, of course, Vincent Price.
The story remains relevant – 2020 saw the release of Lady Usher and in 2023 horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan created the acclaimed eight-episode series The Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix. Musically it has inspired an opera by Philip Glass, an unfinished opera by Debussy and concept albums by The Alan Parsons Project, Peter Hammill and Lou Reed. Steven Berkoff has adapted the story for the stage, Ray Bradbury wrote a science fiction story ‘Usher II’ and numerous artists including Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Alastair and Leonor Fini have produced illustrations.
The House of Usher’s fortunes continue to rise.
About the Speaker
London-born and now living in Hastings, Antony Clayton is the author of Subterranean City: Beneath the Streets of London (2001 & 2010), London’s Coffee Houses (2003), Decadent London (2005, 2019), Secret Tunnels of England, Folklore and Fact (September 2015), Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley (2012 & 2017) and Mansion of Gloom: The Unsettling Legacy of Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (December 2024). He has given talks at the British Library, ICA, Conway Hall, Freemason’s Hall and various other venues in and out of London.
Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is Eerie East Anglia (pub. Aug 2024) for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com
Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.
[Image: a scene from Roger Corman’s 1960 adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher.]
