A House-Boat on the Styx

A House-Boat on the Styx is a fantasy novel written by John Kendrick Bangs in 1895.

A House-Boat on the Styx
Front cover of the first edition
AuthorJohn Kendrick Bangs
IllustratorPeter Newell[1]
CountryUnited States
SeriesAssociated Shades
GenreFantasy short stories
PublisherHarper & Brothers
Publication date
1895
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages171 pp
OCLC859421539
LC ClassPS1064.B3 H6 1896[2]
Followed byThe Pursuit of the House-Boat 

The original full title was A House-Boat on the Styx: Being Some Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades. The novel was first published by Harper Brothers in 1896 with illustrations by Peter Newell (24 plates).[1]

Plot summary

The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died (up to the time in which the book is set, which seems to be about the time of its publication) has gone to Styx, the river that circles the underworld.

The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx being startled—and annoyed—by the arrival of a houseboat on the Styx. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that he is actually to be appointed the boat's janitor.

What follows are eleven more stories (for a total of twelve) which are set on the house boat. There is no central theme, and the purpose of the book appears to be as a literary thought experiment to see what would happen if various famous dead people were put in the same room with each other. Each chapter is a short story featuring various souls from history and mythology. In the twelfth chapter the house boat disappears, leading into the sequel, The Pursuit of the House-Boat.

Notes

A House-Boat on the Styx appears to have no original fictional characters in it. All are borrowed—with varying degrees of licence—from either history or mythology.

Throughout the book, there is a running joke that Shakespeare didn't actually write any of his own plays, that they were actually ghostwritten by Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other contemporaries. Will always tries to change the subject quickly when authorship comes into conversation.

The book was on the Publishers Weekly list of 10 best-selling novels in the US, 1896.

References
  1. Catalog record (New York: Harper, 1896). HathiTrust Digital Library. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
      Contents and Illustrations, pp. v-viii, list 12 chapters and 24 plates. The illustrations are not credited but they are clearly signed by Peter Newell, the credited illustrator of the sequels.
  2. "A house-boat on the Styx; being some account of the divers doings of the ...". LC Online Catalog. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
      Links include electronic copy at HathiTrust Digital Library.
  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 39.
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