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The Castle of the King
| Title | The Castle of the King |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2024-10-17 17:19:06 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
An aged poet becomes separated by a long distance from his beloved and dying wife. They were two people from different lives and backgrounds, yet he worked hard to make a name for himself. After many years of toiling, he is distraught that it has taken so long and that they should be separated still at the end. Upon realising that his love has died, he embarks on a journey to the Castle of the King of Death to find her. "The Castle of the King" is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published in 1881 in Stoker's first collection of short stories “Under the Sunset”. Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847 – 1912) was an Irish author most famous for his 1897 Gothic novel “Dracula”, a seminal book that continues to influence the vampire genre in print and film to this day. Other notable works by this author “Miss Betty” (1898), “The Mystery of the Sea” (1902), and “The Jewel of Seven Stars” (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
Review
On first reading this short story I read it as a standalone and not in context of its being one of a group of eight children's stories that were part of the collection of stories in Stoker's Under the Sunset collection. On this second reading I read it along with the other stories in the collection. Although the context of the story is quite a depressing topic for children one must take into the account the time these stories were written. Thinking of some of the gruesomeness of Grimms' Fairy Tales that were also written in the nineteenth century I reconsidered my first appraisal of rating this story was being based on the fact I thought of the how depressing the topic was for children and now felt I should rate it based on its writing merit. Here I have to admit that the prose is quite beautiful and therefore deserves a more definitive rating. And to be fair to the author I now see that the topic of grief or to be more precise the understanding of the phrase to die of a broken heart is to be one as necessary for children to understand as well as adults.
