What inspired the story for Frozen Charlotte? Did you know how things would play out before you started? The bleak story of Frozen Charlotte originated in a New York Observer article in 1840 that described the frigid death of a real-life young woman somewhere in upstate New York. Over the next few years, some songs and poems helped to further the popularity of the story, and soon it caught fire in America. The story had a clear and easily-understood moral: listen to your mother and don’t be vain. Both Charlotte books hit the nail on the dead, having an excellent balance of fast placed plot, the supernatural, characters you care about, and nasty little dolls ... -- Ginger Nuts of Horror

Was it difficult to make a Victorian ghost story seem contemporary and relevant for modern readers? What do you think modern technology like the Ouija board app and mobile phones added to the story? Grief and death are difficult subjects to write about but I find horror stories more effective when they deal with some real life horror as well as supernatural scares. Losing our loved ones, or dying ourselves, is one of our most fundamental fears, so it’s a useful one to tap into for horror.Denise Van Patten. "An Introduction to Bisque Dolls - About.com". About. Archived from the original on 2011-07-07. It’s commonly accepted that these dolls were didactic tools, physical representations of the consequences of parental disobedience. It’s widely believed that Victorian children were well-aware of the origin story of these dolls and played with them nonetheless. After all, many aspects of Victorian culture are openly macabre and death-obsessed, so this grisly historical narrative isn’t entirely outlandish. Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. Home >

I'm not sure that there's anything much more dangerous when it comes to faeryland than a magic mirror.” I wanted Sophie to be quite normal, in contrast to the other family members, but her courage and determination are the things I most admire about her, as well as her commitment to find out what happened to her friend. The revelation of how the evil little Frozen Charlotte dolls came to have their power is unsettling and chilling, and reading parts of this late at night in a quiet house I ... admit to looking over my shoulder more than once!... I'd love to see more historical type novels from Alex Bell in future, and eagerly await her next offering. -- Michelle Harrison author of The Thirteen Treasures Author Guy Bass introduces SCRAP, about one robot who tried to protect the humans on his planet against an army of robots. Now the humans need his... A Frozen Charlotte is a specific form of china or bisque doll made in one solid piece without joints from c. 1850 to c. 1920. They were typically inexpensive, and the name Penny doll is also used, in particular for smallest, most affordable versions. The dolls had substantial popularity during the Victorian era.The name of the doll originates from the American folk ballad Fair Charlotte, based on the poem "A Corpse Going to a Ball" [1] by Seba Smith, which tells of a young girl called Charlotte who refused to wrap up warmly to go on a sleigh ride because she did not want to cover up her pretty dress; she froze to death during the journey. [2] So, while it makes a compelling and delightfully morbid origin story, none of the children who actually played with these dolls knew of a connection between their favorite toy and a foolish young woman’s frostbitten corpse. And even though they’ve lost a bit of their historical creepiness, don’t let that stop you from being excited if you find a porcelain doll on the shore. They’re still strangely beautiful, wonderfully creepy, and rare. a b c Coleman. Dorothy S., Elizabeth A. and Evelyn JK.; The Collector's Encyclopaedia of Dolls Volume One, (USA, 1978) I’d originally intended for the dolls to be voodoo dolls but it was hard to get too excited about this because they’ve been done so many times before. Frozen Charlotte dolls are quite unique, and not all that many people seem to know about them, so I thought they’d be more interesting. I obviously did a lot of research about Frozen Charlottes. I also researched other famous haunted dolls, such as Annabelle and Robert. A common theme seemed to be for a child to be given a haunted doll that caused all kinds of problems in the house, which was blamed on the child at first, until the parents came to believe that the doll moved around by itself, or when there was no one home.