|
Post by dem bones on Jul 27, 2019 11:38:28 GMT
there are some good witchly covers out there, like this one (and I'm sure there's a thread on this somewhere around here) Sev's Favourite Occult Covers thread.
|
|
|
Post by kooshmeister on Jul 29, 2019 17:59:16 GMT
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Aug 4, 2019 0:10:57 GMT
From the junkshop for $2: Was pleased to get this one - a kid turning into a Bigfoot. Published by Horwitz in 1981, but first published by Tower I think:
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Aug 30, 2019 22:39:13 GMT
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 11, 2019 15:56:59 GMT
Picked this pair up on lightening return visit to Books-Peckham two Sunday's back. John Gordon - The Giant Under the Snow (Puffin, 1971: originally Hutchinson, 1968) Blurb: A breathlessly exciting adventure by a new author. An ancient warlord is on the march again with his fearful 'leather men,' and disaster will befall if he gets hold of the magic golden buckle which Jonquil, Bill and Arf are hiding.Gerald Kersh - The Dead Look On (Four Square, 1967: originally William Heinemann, 1943) Photo's: Campbell MacCallum & Associated PressBlurb: The Lidice atrocity ... the memory of it will live forever. Written in anger, Gerald Kersh's grim, lucid novel of the infamous German atrocity spares nothing. In harsh detail he reconstructs the insane, inhuman revenge inflicted upon a whole village for the death of one German. "Here is a novel that must be read as a stern and terrible duty. it is a reconstruction by Mr. Kersh of the Lidice atrocity, told with such imaginative power that one dreads going to the next page." - Daily Telegraph "Mr. Kersh makes you coldly angry, as, indeed, any retelling of such a story must do, but he is no mere reporter. He has a moving and really exciting story to tell." - Sunday Times
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 12, 2019 19:41:48 GMT
Picked this pair up on lightening return visit to Books-Peckham two Sunday's back. John Gordon - The Giant Under the Snow (Puffin, 1971: originally Hutchinson, 1968) I love this cover. I bought a copy a while back in large part because of it.
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Sept 13, 2019 21:02:53 GMT
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Sept 14, 2019 1:44:23 GMT
Those are some very cool covers, James. I'm curious about Gerald Savory's "novelisation," Count Dracula, issued as a tie-in with the BBC Louis Jourdan TV play, which is often regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations ever filmed. Will have to see if there's an existing Vault thread for the book. It's probably quite scarce now, I should think.
Cheers, Helrunar
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Sept 14, 2019 7:08:05 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Michael Connolly on Sept 14, 2019 12:10:59 GMT
Those are some very cool covers, James. I'm curious about Gerald Savory's "novelisation," Count Dracula, issued as a tie-in with the BBC Louis Jourdan TV play, which is often regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations ever filmed. Will have to see if there's an existing Vault thread for the book. It's probably quite scarce now, I should think. Cheers, Helrunar A copy of Gerald Savory's Count Dracula was knocking about at home for years. While it wasn't mine, and I have no idea where it came from, incredibly I never read it. It might still be there.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 14, 2019 15:24:24 GMT
Those are some very cool covers, James. I'm curious about Gerald Savory's "novelisation," Count Dracula, issued as a tie-in with the BBC Louis Jourdan TV play, which is often regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations ever filmed. Will have to see if there's an existing Vault thread for the book. It's probably quite scarce now, I should think. Cheers, Helrunar A copy of Gerald Savory's Count Dracula was knocking about at home for years. While it wasn't mine, and I have no idea where it came from, incredibly I never read it. It might still be there. Much as I'm a fan of the TV adaptation, the novelisation, a mundane retelling of Stoker's novel, is essentially pointless, or so it seemed to me. I'm sure we had a designated thread for Count Dracula - must have been on Vault MK I. There's some stuff about Count Dracula on this one, though: Susan Penhaligon: The Panto YearsJames, judged on that magnificent stash, the Spring Lifeline bookfair is without doubt the single most wonderful event on the planet. Well done, mate!
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Sept 14, 2019 21:55:31 GMT
James, judged on that magnificent stash, the Spring Lifeline bookfair is without doubt the single most wonderful event on the planet. Well done, mate! It is pretty good - last day today. Here's a few more grabbed yesterday: For a buck: $4: $5: And the princely sum of $10:
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 16, 2019 9:30:34 GMT
Not quite on same scale as James's Spring Lifeline exploits, but had decent result on Sclater Street early yesterday morning, bagging the Whoopee! 1976 and Shiver and Shake 1978 annuals, plus this pair for £1 each. Mike Ashley - Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life (Carroll & Graf, 2001) Blurb: Algernon Blackwood was one of the greatest writers of supernatural fiction of the twentieth century - Dion Fortune described him as ‘pre-eminent among the writers of occult fiction' — yet he remains a mysterious figure. An indefatigable traveller, an undercover agent during the First World War, a Searcher for the Red Cross, he was also an extremely popular story-teller on radio and television - indeed, he appeared on the first ever television programme. He originated the play, The Starlight Express, was a member of the magical order of the Golden Dawn, and was acquainted with most of the literary and artistic establishment of his day from Hilaire Belloc to Arthur Machen, from Sinclair Lewis to H. G. Wells.
Blackwood revealed that all of his stories were based on personal experiences or those of his close friends. This from the man whose stories take us to a lonely island in the river Danube where two travellers face the cosmic powers of the Earth in all their might: and deep into the deserts of Egypt where a lone man witnesses the spirit of the ancient past rise up like a gigantic wall of sand. H. P. Lovecraft said of him. 'Of the quality of Mr Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences ...'
In the l920s, he published an autobiography: But as its title suggests - Episodes Before Thirty - it covers only the period up to 1899 and it ends. ‘Of mystical, psychic or so-called “occult" experiences, I have purposely said nothing.' But there was much to he said. Mike Ashley has been researching his life for more than twenty years and has discovered a wonderfully complex character - a profound mystic, a delightful storyteller, an innocent child, a wild adventurer, and a remarkable man. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, his full biography is available for the first time and reveals the inside story on this most mystical and magical of men.Glen St. John Barclay - Anatomy of Horror: The Masters of Occult Fiction (St. Martin's Press, 1978) The Lure of the Occult
Vampires and Ladies: Sheridan Le Fanu Sex and Horror: Bram Stoker Love after Death: Henry Rider Haggard The Myth that Never was. Howard P. Lovecraft Orthodox Horrors: Charles Williams and William P. Blatty The Devil and Dennis Wheatley
Notes Bibliography IndexBlurb: Come into the dark world of Dracula with a master of the occult. Leave with a bit of the vampire in you .... Glen St.John Barclay has written the definitive work on a subject few other authors would dare to approach. With a scholar’s thorough research and a philosopher‘s fresh insight, Barclay has traced the imagery of horror through the ages, entering a dark and forbidding landscape of our past. He has gone to the edges of fantasy and fact to paint a portrait of terror, of real people whose lives were the beginnings of myths, and of famous writers who have made the myths live.
So reader, beware! The road to Dracula’s castle is paved with such characters as Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a beautiful Transylvanian aristocrat with a special fondness for the blood of peasant girls, and Vlad the Impaler — the first real Dracula — who enjoyed "dining outdoors surrounded by a veritable forest of impaled men, women and children." Barclay analyzes the roots of occult legend in the works of such diverse classic writers as Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Henry Rider Haggard, Howard Lovecraft, Charles Williams, William Peter Blatty and Dennis Wheatley, giving us his own astute theories of occult appeal along the way. From Dracula to The Exorcist, Barclay looks at the role of occult fiction not only as a vehicle for genuine human experience, but also as a means of dealing symbolically with things that could not be dealt with otherwise.
Perhaps we all have a bit of Dracula within us . . .I remember enjoying Anatomy of Horror — especially the cracking chapter on Gregory Pend ... Dennis Wheatley: "The trouble is that his sentences are perfect until one starts looking at the words" — as a library loan in pre-Vault days. "Surprising though it might be, there is a real sense in which Wheatley brought philosophy to the story of the occult. It is also true that he brought sadism, chauvinism, racism, sexism, flagellation, and stocking tops, some of which might have been present implicitly before, but never as the raison d'être of the story." Friend Richard also had a neat stash of '60s Gollancz yellowcover hardbacks, mostly factual and crime fiction from what I could gather at £1 a go: if money were no object, etc. Still, it was a treat to see them all lined up.
|
|
|
Post by johnnymains on Sept 16, 2019 19:13:25 GMT
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Sept 16, 2019 19:52:08 GMT
Thank you Primrose Hildebrand. I looked at the table of contents and smiled to see a chapter entitled "Ghosts and scholars." I hope Rosemary saw that.
cheers, H.
|
|