The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest is a Gothic novel by Ludwig Flammenberg (which is a pseudonym for Carl Friedrich Kahlert) first published in 1794. It is one of the seven 'horrid novels' lampooned by Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey", once thought not to exist except in the text of "Northanger Abbey". The novel consists of a series of lurid tales of hauntings, violence, killings and the supernatural featuring the adventures of Hermann and Helfried and the mysterious wizard Volkert the Necromancer, who has seemingly come back from
Northanger Abbey as the preface of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", thus likening the naive mistakes of Austen's Catherine Morland to those of his own character Briony Tallis, who is in a similar position: both characters have very over-active imaginations, which lead to misconceptions that cause distress in the lives of people around them. Both treat their own lives like those of heroines in fantastical works of fiction, with Miss Morland likening herself to a character in a Gothic novel and young Briony Tallis writing her own melodramatic stories and plays with central characters such as "spontaneous Arabella" based on herself. Richard Adams quotes