Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by
circulating library readers a hundred years ago,
deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of
earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of
serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing
names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as
1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superstition
and Chivalry_:

"It is not one of the least objections against these
fashionable fictions that the imagery of them is
essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands,
clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar
etcetera are continually tormenting us."

Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny
chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and
green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were
sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"
meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Shelley, not a pamphlet
filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The
notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is
said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and
her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six
shillings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the
head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen,
wearing gold cockades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the
names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably
contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps
two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring titles, _The Priory