The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances

About The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances

"The stone dragon and other tragic romances" by Murray Gilchrist is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. It gathers lush, gothic-tinged tales of passionate love curdling into jealousy, fate, and death, often set amid moors, manor houses, and haunted memories. The opening pieces center on doomed lovers—most immediately Ralph Eyre and his cousins Rachel and Mary Verelst—where beauty, obsession, and fatal choices collide. The opening of this collection first follows The Stone Dragon: Ralph disobeys his domineering great-aunt’s marriage scheme, but years later returns to Furnivaux Castle bound by her will to choose between cousins Rachel, dazzling and volatile, and Mary, gentle and shy. He vows himself to Mary; Rachel’s jealousy erupts, she strikes at him with a knife, and Mary saves him by taking the blow. On their stark, quiet wedding day, Rachel returns only to be found dead beside the garden’s stone dragon. The next tale, The Manuscript of Francis Shackerley, recounts a childhood glimpse of Lady Millicent, married off as a child, then a later, intense affair cut short when her alchemist husband discovers them during a storm and coldly bleeds her to death, leaving the narrator spiritually crushed and silent until years later.

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