First published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of 1821, The Man in the Bell was printed in subsequent collections and well received; except by an author named Edgar Allan Poe in America. It's not that Poe was against describing sensations, which he did so well in The Pit and the Pendulum, and A Descent into the Maelstrom, etc., rather he made fun of the way the protagonists in these Blackwood articles logged their sensations, many while they were about to die as if that was normal.
Poe listed The Man in the Bell in How to Write a Blackwood Article of 1838 where he punned the magazine, Margaret Fuller (Psyche Zenobia), Waldo Emerson (Dr. Moneypenny) and tales of sensation. There is more background in Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems.
And then there was 'The Man in the Bell,' a paper by-the-by, Miss Zenobia, which I cannot sufficiently recommend to your attention. It is the history of a young man who goes to sleep under the clapper of a church bell, and is awakened for a tolling of a funeral. The sound drives him mad, and, accordingly, pulling out his tablets, he gives a record of his sensations. Sensations are the great things after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations . . ..
I agree with Poe, but point out that parallels can be drawn between the descriptions of the passing of the bell in this story and the pendulum in Poe's story of 1843 that was printed 22 years after Maginn's. The Man in the Bell, however, pales in comparison to nearly every Poe horror short story. This is not because William Maginn was a bad horror short story writer, it was because Poe was so good. Consider this delectable passage:
The roaring of the bell confused my intellect, and my fancy soon began to teem with all sorts of strange and terrifying ideas. The bell pealing above, and opening its jaws with a hideous clamour, seemed to me at one time a ravening monster, raging to devour me; at another, a whirlpool ready to suck me into its bellowing abyss. As I gazed on it, it assumed all shapes; it was a flying eagle, or rather a roc of the Arabian story-tellers, clapping its wings and screaming over me. As I looked upward into it, it would appear sometimes to lengthen into indefinite extent, or to be twisted at the end into the spiral folds of the tail of a flying-dragon. Nor was the flaming breath or fiery glance of that fabled animal wanting to complete the picture. My eyes, inflamed, bloodshot, and glaring, invested the supposed monster with a full proportion of unholy light.
Unfortunately William Maginn did not write more horror tales and this is the only story of his that makes the countdown of the Top 40 horror short stories from 1800-1849.
Here is the homepage for the Best Horror, Ghost, Werewolf and Vampire Short Story Blog and my Website is AndrewBarger.com.
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