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Post by dem bones on May 4, 2008 19:31:27 GMT
Charles Lloyd Birkin (ed.) - Tales Of Death (Philip Allan, 1936)
Clifford Knight - Kismet
H. Boswell Lancaster - Down-Draught To Hell
Oswell Blakeston - The Hut
Hope Wilson - Lion Of Bengal
Malcolm Ellison - The Devil-Plant
Sydney Darcy - Swift Death
W.J. Pollock - The Cottage
R. P. Morrison - Lost With All Hands
Malcolm Critchley - The Return
Esme H. Bidlake - An Appointment With Death
S.G. MacDonnell - The Graverhouse Affair
I don't have a cover scan to go with this I'm afraid, doubly unfortunate as this isn't one of the most inspiring entry in the series.
Malcolm Ellison - The Devil-Plant: Clare, Suffolk, May 1933. Whatever killed the rats sucked out every morsel of meat from their bodies, leaving two flattened pelts on the greenhouse floor. Eric Brent won't be convinced that his beloved South African 'everlasting orchid' is to blame, which is bad news for his domestic pets. And his wife Elsie's arm ...
Hope Wilson - Lion Of Bengal: Indian jungle. Cyril Frobisher is among a party of railway engineers commissioned to build a line through Willawance territory. The witch-doctor doesn't take kindly to the idea.
Death by witchcraft, poison dart, malaria and an attack by Mango trees!
Oswell Blakeston - The Hut: "The first lad who slept there hacked off his hand with a penknife. He confessed, afterwards, that he had stolen with that hand ... The last ...er ... victim, was a tramp who had stolen a bag of gardening tools from the village ... he blinded himself on a rake ..."
It served as home to a religious fanatic, a fervent believer in "if thy right hand causes thee to sin .." self-mutilation for even the slightest transgressions. Peter and Daisy, lost in the countryside, hole up there for the night but she is unable to sleep and, fatally, says as much to the sinister stranger who greets them in the morning. The hut is on his land and, back at his farmhouse, he relates to them the macabre history of the hut with obscene relish ...
Blakeston was revising The Hut for inclusion in a Hugh Lamb anthology when he died and it's certainly worthy of revival. Head and shoulders above anything else in the disappointingly weak Tales Of Death.
Sydney Darcy - Swift Death : Cornwall. Gretchen, unhappily married to Julian, can't find it in her to leave him as she knows it will break his heart. So she pushes him off a cliff instead. Or was it all a dream?
H. Boswell Lancaster - Down-Draught To Hell: Ernest Rackman and wife Margaret take up residence in a village on the outskirts of Liverpool. Margaret hates it from the first and even the skeptical Ernest comes to admit it's haunted. It was built from the materials of a demolished prison where men were crammed into an underground cell and left to rot. They want company.
Clifford Knight - Kismet: Uncle George has acted as young Arthur's benefactor ever since his father's suicide but, despairing of the young man's profligate ways, leaves him just a year's allowance and a statue of Osiris in his will. When Arthur smashes the statue, he finds inside a papyrus which, Mr. Wellbye of the British Museum excitedly informs him, contains details of a previously undiscovered Egyptian tomb. The pair set off to excavate a site near the Giza pyramid. Inevitably, Arthur's greed gets the better of him and he's crushed to death while merrily looting a booby-trapped burial chamber.
Esme H. Bidlake - An Appointment With Death: Little Tony has been knocked down by a roadhog and hovers on the brink of death. The Doctor gravely warns that if he doesn't recover by 11 o'clock he's a goner. Come the fatal hour and the boy's eyes flicker open just as there's an almighty crash in the street outside. Tony has been delivered but his father's been mangled in a car accident.
Malcolm Critchley - The Return: "Gruesome Discovery At Brighton". Ralph Hamlyn learns of his wife Edith's affair with Robert Hardinge and avenges himself by lacing their drinks with poison, sacking them up and dumping their mutilated bodies in the sea at Black Rock. Their ghosts haunt him until he does the decent thing and blows his brains out.
Hamlyn confesses all via an aspiring author whom he temporarily possesses to jot down his confession.
R. P. Morrison - Lost With All Hands: Such was the fate of the Kamptee which went down off the coast of Gibraltar on 4th October 1924. Exactly a year later, John March, whose twin brother was a casualty of the disaster, is transported back through time and aboard the Kamptee from its sister ship, Satara. During his absence he is presumed dead and trussed in a sack for burial at sea until one of the crew spots him struggling. He tells the Doctor of his experience aboard the doomed vessel and tries to convince him that it portends evil for Satara.
W. J. Pollock - The Cottage: " .... as fast as thought itself, my head and shoulders were enclosed in a slimy, quivering mass, that seemed to be possessed of a hundred pairs of arms."
Loughton Hollow. The two previous occupants of the cottage have been killed in mysterious circumstances, the most recent casualty having half his face eaten away in the process. Narrator John still believes there must be "some quite ordinary explanation" for the murders and the fact that scores of duck bills float atop the filthy pond in the garden. He's right of course. That night as he and friend Dick Chalmers keep vigil in the haunted room, they are attacked ... by an octopus. John is half-throttled as we wrestles the beast until Dick finds an axe and sets about hacking it to pieces.
"How [it] managed to live in our climate and under such unusual circumstances must always remain a mystery."
S . G. MacDonell - The Graverhouse Affair: "Dressed in some indescribable garb, its face a horrible whitish hue, shiny and putrid in effect ... the hair, bleached and tangled, matted over parts of the skull and face, the dead eyes gazing our way ... then the awful figure stopped and gave a senile cackle as it waved its stump at us ..."
Graverhouse Grange plays host to a terrible secret, known to the Lady of the house and her pretty daughter Miriam but kept from the headstrong son, Clive. All he knows about his father is that he died in mysterious circumstances when he was a child and the tragedy affected his mother's mind to the point where she is ever watchful and prone to wild mood swings. One stormy night, a dreadful figure approaches them at table and the awful truth is revealed.
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Post by Calenture on May 4, 2008 19:49:39 GMT
Blakeston was revising The Hut for inclusion in a Hugh Lamb anthology when he died and it's certainly worthy of revival. Head and shoulders above anything else in the disappointingly weak Tales Of Death. I looked up Oswell Blakeston, and found this Wikipedia page, which mentions his pseudonym shared with Roger Burford of 'Simon', and other things. "He started work in films at Gaumont Studios, as a colleague of David Lean. He then edited Close Up magazine from 1927 to 1933, founded by Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson, with H. D. and Robert Herring as contributors. In 1930 he made with Francis Bruguière the short abstract film Light Rhythms, which is extant. "He then edited the little magazine Seed with Herbert Jones, and wrote detective fiction with Roger Burford, under a pseudonym Simon. From 1929 he was also publishing under the Blakeston name novels and stories, producing about 15 books of fiction, as well as ten collections of poetry. The novels are wide-ranging, and include a number of works that mix gay themes with suspense and detective plots. "Blakeston was a contributor to John Gawsworth's anthologies, and a collaborator of M. P. Shiel. He also authored a number of travel books. "Blakeston's work was produced for small press and specialty publishers and is no longer in print. However, the Henry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin is home to an archive of Blakeston materials available to researchers (see external link below). "Many of Blakeston's books are dedicated to his longtime partner, the artist Max Chapman, who also provided illustrations to a number of the volumes." |
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Post by weirdmonger on May 5, 2008 8:06:15 GMT
I looked up Oswell Blakeston, and found this Wikipedia page, which mentions his pseudonym shared with Roger Burford of 'Simon', and other things. I've been fascinated by much that has been on the Vault in recent days, including that OB & RB ('Simon') wrote something called 'The Cat With The Moustache'! As long as it didn't have flying worms! Thanks for making my various visits here interesting and worthwhile. des |
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Post by Calenture on May 5, 2008 14:28:24 GMT
I've been fascinated by much that has been on the Vault in recent days, including that OB & RB ('Simon') wrote something called 'The Cat With The Moustache'! As long as it didn't have flying worms! Thanks for making my various visits here interesting and worthwhile. des I've just been looking for that Cat With a Moustache story. Unfortunately it's not available, and I must have missed the Vault post on it; but I did find this reference, which gives pretty clear indication why you, in particular, would find Blakeston of interest. I found the quote here. "Among his enormous literary output were his 1932 book Magic Aftermath, "the first fiction to be published in spiral binding"; the 1935 crime story The Cat with the Moustache (a collaboration with Roger Burford), "one of the first descriptions of trips with mescal"; and the 1938 anthology Proems, in which Blakeston "published the first poems by Lawrence Durrell"." I did scan and post one of the 'Simon' stories at the original Gruesome Cargoes. I've once again begun wondering about using a public domain story for a Filthy Creations entry - was your download of The Flying Worm found in a book, or online, Des? It seems a crying shame that Blakeston's work is no longer in print. He also deserves his own thread, I think. While hunting for that moustachioed cat piece, I also found this other site which has a load of seriously loony drawings by Spare and a fabulous account, by Blakeston, of meeting an unnamed magician in London. Unnamed, but it doesn't seem too hard to guess who... Now what's it worth to post a link to that? Or should I put it in FC?  |
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Post by weirdmonger on May 5, 2008 15:18:07 GMT
"published the first poems by Lawrence Durrell"." Thanks, Rog. Fascinating to see the writer of The Flying Worm liked to read Lawrence Durrell! I scanned it from one of my books. I can't remember which one, now. Probably illegally!!? I was possibly fascinated then that 'The Flying Worm' was a sort of 'nemonymous' story. I got the impression from the Wikipedia link that you posted that 'The Cat With The Moustache' was a novel by 'Simon'! des PS: Completely irrelevant to this thread, I wrote a DFL thingie today called ... 'The Thingie' |
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Post by Calenture on May 5, 2008 17:28:01 GMT
I got the impression from the Wikipedia link that you posted that 'The Cat With The Moustache' was a novel by 'Simon'! If it's a collaboration by those two authors, it probably would be a 'Simon' story. But at the moment it seems to be anyone's guess. I'm pretty sure that the Simon stories must be out of copyright. But these things are never certain. A while back I found a short story by Lovecraft and C M Eddy. I downloaded and printed it. Days later I revisited the site to find a notice that the story had been removed as C M Eddy's family claimed copyright. This leaves me wondering why they're hoarding it. With the Lovecraft connection, a collection of such stories would be guarranteed to sell. Now I need to find that printout - I think it's in a folder. Anyway, so far as I can see, no one's been rushing to print Blakeston or 'Simon' since Hugh Lamb's reprinting in one of the Star Horror books. So I think I'll help spread the word with FC. Flying Worms anyone? Oh, here's a link to that O A Spare site, with the Blakeston recollection of Magicians in London way down the page. The Cult of OneThe artwork is unfortunately protected - but not very well. I've hacked in and got two of the pictures so far.  |
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Post by benedictjjones on May 28, 2008 12:51:05 GMT
^which lovecraft/cm eddy story was it?
i bought a collection last year in a discount book warehouse that contained a lot of lovecrafts cowritten/ghost written pieces. (got it for about a quid as well!!)
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