Black Cat Vol. 03 No. 02 November 1897

The Black Cat was a monthly literary magazine that dared to publish stories other periodicals wouldn't touch: strange tales, uncanny fictions, and romances steeped in gothic shadow. This November 1897 issue opens with "Melted Melody," James J. McEvilly's unsettling tale of an archaeologist conducting a bizarre experiment in an ice cave. Wellington Vandiver brings "Old Pruitt," a jaunty account of why the merriest block in gaol earned its notorious reputation. Philip Verrill Mighels offers "The Coming and Going of a Washoe," a moving story of a Native American boy who bridges two worlds and two mens' hearts. Joseph A. Altsheler contributes "A Problem of the East," an adventure of an American mariner enslaved and plotting escape. Annie Prescott Bull closes with "An Aproned Angel," a tale of love that transcends death itself. Together these five stories capture the magazine's mission: fiction that provokes, disturbs, and moves in equal measure. For readers who crave Victorian literature's hidden margins, where unknown writers experimented with the fantastic and the forbidden, this issue is a portal to a literary underworld that flourished just beyond the respectable canon.