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Post by dem bones on Apr 25, 2008 17:51:30 GMT
Oscar Cook (1888?-1952) Illustration by Dudley Cowes to Si Urag Of The Tail from Fifty Strangest Stories Ever told, (Odhams, 1937) Oscar Cook, playright and novelist, was for many years in the Government Service in British North Borneo, and that mysterious island provides the background for some of his most effective tales of the supernatural. Since his return to England, he has been author, editor, publisher, actor, and secretary to a dramatic school. Now he is in business". Hugh Walpole - A Century Of Creepy Stories (Hutchinson, 1934) ... Cook had been a District Officer in British North Borneo from 1911 to 1919 ... Returning to Britain, he wrote up his experiences as an autobiography and was recommended to try the Curtis Brown agency in selling the book. It was allocated to Christine Campbell Thomson who gave the book its title, "Borneo: Stealer Of Hearts" and placed with Hurst & Blackett who published it in 1924. At the time it was considered one of the most authorative books on Borneo.Mike Ashley, Unlocking The Night, in Gaslight And Ghosts , (World Fantasy Convention/ Robinsons, 1988) Here's an (incomplete?) biblio of Oscar's horror stories On The Highway - (Weird Tales, Jan 1925) Si Urag Of The Tail - (Weird Tales, July 1926; You'll Need A Night Light, Sept.1927; A Century Of Creepy Stories, 1934; 50 Strangest Stories Ever Told, Odhams, 1937; Still Not At Night, Arrow 1962) The Creature Of Man - (Weird Tales, Nov 1926) The Sacred Jars - (Weird Tales, March 1927) Piecemeal - (By Daylight Only, October, 1929; Weird Tales, Feb 1930; Not At Night Omnibus, 1937; Pan Horror 2, 1960) When Glister Walked - (Gruesome Cargoes, July,1928; A Century Of Creepy Stories 1934; 50 Strangest Stories Ever Told, Odhams, 1937; Not At Night, Arrow, 1960, 1962) Boomerang - (Switch On The Light, April, 1931; A Century Of Creepy Stories 1934; Pan Horror 2, 1960) His Beautiful Hands - (At Dead Of Night,Nov, 1931; Not At Night Omnibus,1937; Pan Horror 1, 1959) The Great White Fear - (Grim Death, Aug. 1932; A Century Of Creepy Stories 1934;) Golden Lilies - ( Adventure Story magazine (Sept. 1922); Keep On The Light, 1933; More Not At Night, Arrow 1961) Dog Death - (Terror By Night, 1934) The Crimson Head-Dress - (Nightmare By Daylight, 1936) I've a feeling that "The Sacred Jars" and "When Glister Walked" are the same story. Other than the Weird Tales originals, I've not seen either 'Dog Death' or 'The Crimson Head-Dress' from the later 'Not At Night's, so these are of especial interest if only to confirm they do or do not feature the wonderful Warwick! There's a 1991 reprint of Borneo: The Stealer of Hearts advertised at wildasia, but I don't believe his weird fiction has ever been collected, which, if true, is a scandal. I was disappointed with the non-Warwick stories when I first read them, though (like Piecemeal and Boomerang) three are set in Borneo and feature a British District Officer, but When Glister Walked and Si Urag Of The Tail have kind of grown on me.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 25, 2008 20:28:55 GMT
Scholarly work, Kev - just another reason why The Vault has become so essential
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Post by dem bones on Apr 25, 2008 21:51:51 GMT
It owes PLENTY to Mike Ashley's aforementioned Unlocking The Night which, as you'd expect, is exemplary, by far the most informative article I've read on the series. We really should give him a group chinese burn until he agrees to expand it into a book.
Oscar married Christine Campbell Thomson in 1924 and, crucially, became managing director of Selwyn & Blount the following year, so obviously, he had plenty of say in what books the company published. Christine had always wanted to edit an anthology of horror stories, and Not At Night appeared in October 1925. It was originally conceived as a one-off, so thank goodness it sold in vast numbers!
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Post by dem bones on Mar 16, 2009 18:56:07 GMT
Don't much use Wikipedia these days as sometimes what passes for 'fact' seems so dubious as to make Vault look deadly accurate, but I was delighted to stumble upon an entry for Oscar Cook by 'Jasper33'. Thanks to 'Jasper'/Rebecca we now have another Oscar Cook title to hunt down, a novel The Second Wave. No details of the publisher, but the date given is "1930 or earlier", and it was "translated into the Dutch as Gij zult niet (set on a rubber estate near Mount Kinabalu, North Borneo, with a theme of adultery)." For a little more comment on the great man and his work: Vault Of Evil: Mk 1Good on you, Rebecca!
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Post by lobolover on Mar 16, 2009 23:05:29 GMT
It owes PLENTY to Mike Ashley's aforementioned Unlocking The Night which, as you'd expect, is exemplary, by far the most informative article I've read on the series. We really should give him a group chinese burn until he agrees to expand it into a book. From my many years of experience, Ive come to believe that nothing can change a persons mind as much as a forced inititiation procedure of the Wehrwolf kind .
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Post by intruder2k on Mar 17, 2009 9:45:48 GMT
Hi Dem, Yep, I'm still around, lurking, forgotten but not gone Just been doing a bit of research into this Oscar Cook thing and there's a small error on Wikipedia: the title of his book is THE SEVENTH WAVE, rather than SECOND. Shows up on Amazon, publisher Selwyn & Blount, 1926. No copies to be had, although astonishingly there does seem to be an online listing for a Singaporean library that has it. Don't suppose anyone's a member, though Cheers
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Post by dem bones on Mar 17, 2009 10:57:12 GMT
Delighted to hear from you again, Graham and many thanks for supplying the correction.
A little more info: Mike Ashley (Unlocking The Night yet again) mentions that, following his divorce from CCT, Cook continued to write novels, but these fell outside of the genre. Also, Selwyn & Blount went under at the same time the Not At Night's folded, so for those interested in tracking them down, you're looking for a different publisher.
It's to be hoped we can eventually interest Wordsworth editions in a long overdue collection of Oscar's macabre fiction, though admittedly it would make for a slim book as things stand.....
.... unless it was a shared collection with 'Flavia Richardson'!
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Post by intruder2k on Mar 17, 2009 16:06:36 GMT
Well if Wordsworth ever DID do that, I think we'd be fighting over first place in the queue Another snippet (amazing how all these snippets, put together, tell a story of intrigue): Cook had a three part serial published in THE WIDE WORLD MAGAZINE between July and September, 1925. I found this out because an issue containing the second part is on sale at abebooks and the vendor kindly had a look for me. The serial is called "Two Years in Borneo" and I'm guessing it's a non-fictional, autobiographical thing, like his BORNEO book. Shame it's non horror, but it all adds up. Looks like Cook dined out on his overseas experience for the rest of his life!
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Post by dem bones on Mar 17, 2009 21:32:53 GMT
Cook had a three part serial published in THE WIDE WORLD MAGAZINE between July and September, 1925. I found this out because an issue containing the second part is on sale at abebooks and the vendor kindly had a look for me. The serial is called "Two Years in Borneo" and I'm guessing it's a non-fictional, autobiographical thing, like his BORNEO book. Only a bit of wild speculation, but could this be a serialisation of Borneo: Stealer Of Hearts? Re: Wild World I'm sure you'll have seen this? Paul Safont - The Wide World (MacMillan, 2004) Blurb: From 1898 to 1965, The Wide World was the bestselling magazine for men who craved adventure. Each issue was filled with extraordinarily eccentric, but true, tales from around the world, ranging from lion hunts and shark attacks to brigandage, club bets and survival.
There are thrilling accounts of well-documented, yet forgotten exploits, such as Sir Vivian “Bunny” Fuch’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1957 and war hero Maurice Wilson’s disastrous (totally insane) solo assault on Everest in 1933. There is an endless fascination with logging, lion wrestling, and the ranking of snakes in terms of their venom. Great details emerge, such as the fact that the man who survived going over Niagara Falls in a rubber ball later died after slipping on a banana skin in New Zealand, or that a Wolf will never eat a human foot. There is even real pathos, as when we learn Maurice Wilson’s last diary entry before dying on Everest reads: “Off again. . .Gorgeous day.”
Recounted in wonderful, muscular prose (in which a wet suit is a ‘free swimming aqua-lung outfit’) and accompanied by maps, editorials, brief reports and adverts of sublime absurdity, this anthology will include the best of the magazine, presented in it's original design, with colour reproductions of its striking jackets throughout. MacMillan
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 18, 2009 7:17:05 GMT
I absolutely love these stories. I can probably say this because I'm Scottish but that whole thing of 'crossing the andes' on a frog is everything that made England both great and absurd.
Obviously, the Scots had a few eccentrics to add to the pile but you lot seem to do it naturally. The Maurice Wilson story is incredible. Deciding to fly to Everest and prove that vegetarians can reach the top with no equipment at all is simply amazing. Add to this the fact that Maurice couldn't even fly. Throw in the single ladies high heel shoe found near the summit and you reach surreal dimensions which Dali would struggle to achieve.
I recently bought My Amazon Adventure by Sebastian Snow,the last English amateur explorer. Snow was a mere lad of 21, had 'unspecialised equipment, inadequate funds , a mere smattering of Spanish' to quote the blurb. he also a metal plates in his thighs from a terrible accident at Eton and very poor eyesight. Under these circumstances what must an Englishman do - walk 3500 miles to find the source of the Amazon of course.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 18, 2009 11:41:02 GMT
Thoroughly enjoyed that, Craig. Made me wanna get hold of a copy of My Amazon Adventure as much as Paul Safont's book!
The 'seventies provides strong opposition, but the between the wars period is still my 'golden age' of horror, and that mainly down to the Men's Adventure aspect of it all. It's too glib and patronising to go on about the "wide-eyed innocence", etc., of the stories - author's like Cook had lived the life and by all accounts it was a tough one - but it is there, at least to us looking on almost a century later. So many of the Brit-contributed Weird Tales, Not At Night and Creeps material feature stout, stiff upper lips in pith helmets and baggy khaki shorts setting off for this or that continent to be crushed by anacondas, cursed by Pharaoh's for looting their tombs, devoured by supremely hostile carnivorous plants or voodoo worshiping cannibal tribes, even, in one remarkable instance, decapitated by Yeti's from outer space at the South Pole!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 18, 2009 12:46:32 GMT
Thanks Dem. .
Actually, I wouldn't rush to buy the book. It's far more interesting reading biographies and anecdotes about Snow. The book itself is a bit of let down because there is really nothing to Snow. He goes to some impossible place with literally no knowledge of anything - geography, language, science...anything. If he gets to a river he can't canoe, make a raft, hardly even swim. He finds a native when he's lost - usually he is lost - he shouts at the native in English until something happens - usually a bed for the night in some hut, sometimes food, occasionally directions, often wrong.
Here's one example. Prior to the Amazon 'expedition' (which consists of Snow simply going to the Amazon and walking along it) he wants to climb a section of a mountain never climbed before. He asks someone in the local pub where there is something difficult and unclimbed. He then goes up the mountain and tries to climb it despite - no training, one goodish leg, terrible weather, no climbing equipment or clothes - and wait for it - severe mountain sickness.
After a while, the fact that Snow doesn't really know anything about where he is or what he's doing begins to pall.
However, hats off the guy. He was simply a marvel.
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Post by allthingshorror on Feb 3, 2010 14:53:33 GMT
Dog Death is the same story as Creature of Man
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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 20, 2012 4:38:37 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Apr 22, 2012 20:58:14 GMT
that really is a top article; he's excellent on another of my heroes, 'Bassett Morgan', too. Many thanks for the link, Mr. D.
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