Twelve O'Clock
In the meantime , however , an easy device had been discovered for pandering to the popular craving for excitement . Ingenious authors realised that it was possible to compress into the five pages of a short story as much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of a Gothic romance . For the brevity of the tales , which were issued in chapbooks , readers were compensated by gaudily coloured illustrations and by double-barrelled titles . An anthology called `` Wild Roses '' -LRB- published by Anne Lemoine , Coleman Street , n.d. -RRB- included : _ Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers , The Monks of Cluny , or Castle Acre Monastery , The Tomb of Aurora , or The Mysterious Summons , The Mysterious Spaniard , or The Ruins of St. Luke 's Abbey _ , and lastly , as a _ bonne bouche _ , _ Barbastal , or The Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash _ . -LSB- 127 -RSB- There are many collections of this kind , some of them dating back to 1806 , among the chapbooks in the British Museum . It is in these brief , blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the short tale of terror , which became so popular a form of literature in the nineteenth century . The taste for these delicious morsels has lingered long .