"The Iron Shroud" or less commonly known as the "Italian Revenge" is a short story of Gothic fiction written by William Mudford in 1830 and published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and also as a twenty four page chapbook.[1][2] It is a classic predicament story about a noble Italian hero who is confined in a continuously and imperceptibly contracting iron torture chamber.[3][4] In the story, the chamber walls and ceiling are slowly contracting, day by day, through mechanical means, to the point of eventually crushing and enveloping the victim, thus metaphorically becoming his iron shroud. The story is considered to have provided Edgar Allan Poe with the idea of the shrinking cell in his short story "The Pit and the Pendulum" and it is viewed as Mudford's most famous tale.[2][5][6][7][8][9]
- ^ The Carlyle Letters online
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
Gothic Fictionwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ The Iron Shroud from Project Gutenberg via the Web archive
- ^ "The Iron Shroud" at Google Books
- ^ Online Biography of William Mudford from the Dictionary of Literary Biography hosted by BookRags p. 2
- ^ Oxford Journals Critique of William Mudford Notes and Queries July 31, 1943 p. 83
- ^ Title The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Related Tales The world's classics Oxford World's Classics Author Edgar Allan Poe Editor J. Gerald Kennedy Edition reissue, illustrated Publisher Oxford University Press, 1998 ISBN 0-19-283771-0, ISBN 978-0-19-283771-4 Length 336 pages Quote: "Explanatory Note #254: Poe apparently got the idea for his shrinking chamber from an 1830 Blackwood's story titled the 'Iron Shroud'"
- ^ The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction By John Sutherland Title The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction Author John Sutherland Edition reprint Publisher Stanford University Press, 1990 ISBN 0-8047-1842-3, ISBN 978-0-8047-1842-4 Length 700 pages from Google Books p. 449
- ^ Internet Book List