A Chamber of Horrors ed. by John Hadfield

[Calenture]

First published 1965 by Studio Vista; this edition Fontana 1967.

Unlocked by John Hadfield, an anthology of the macabre in words and pictures

Illustrated by uniquely grotesque black and white photographs of artworks like Hans Belmer's The Doll - I'll have to Google that, and add it - and others - to do this one justice - this is one of the more oddball anthologies in my collection.

Pulphack (where are you, Pulp'?) commented recently on a pen-and-ink drawn cover for a Corgi edition of Uncle Silas on this thread. Pulp' liked it. I think this might be by the same artist.

A very odd anthology, with quite a bit of poetry, and weird stories and drawings by John Lennon, too.

I - THE BELLS OF HELL
T F Powys......The Hunted Beast
George Crabbe.....Exercise (poem, from The Borough)
Oscar Wilde........Lines (from Ballad of Reading Gaol)
Charles Dickens....Captain Murderer
Charles Causley....Innocents-Song (from Johnny Allelulia)

Drawing of Salome by Aubrey Beardsley

Harry Graham....Tailpiece (from More Ruthless Rhymes, with illustration)

II - SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

Ray Bradbury...........The Small Assassin
Edgar Allan Poe........Berenice
Evelyn Waugh.....Mr Loveday's Little Outing

Chimera - drawing by Michael Ayerton

John Lennon.....Randolf's Party (illustrated)

John Collier.......The Tender Age
John Wyndham :More Spinned Against

III - LOVE AND DEATH

W E Henley......Lines
Oscar Wild..........Lines
Harry Graham....Necessity
Leonid Anddreyev...The Abyss
Robert Browning......Porphyria's Lover
William Sansom........A Woman Seldom Found
M G Lewis.......The Monk (extract from 'Ambrosio' or 'The Monk')
Thomas Hardy.......At the Draper's
P.S...........An Actor of Parts

Drawing by Tomi Ungerer from Underground Sketchbook

William Shakespeare............O Amiable Lovely Death

IV - UNQUIET MINDS

Samuel Warren.....The Spectre-Smitten

Engraving by Honore Daumier

Edgar Allan Poe..........Lines (The Raven)
Villiers de L'Isle-Adam..............The Desire to be a Man

Engraving by Honore Daumier

Arthur Symons....Bianca (poem)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman......The Yellow Wallpaper
George D Painter.....Meeting With a Double (poem)
William Fryer Harvey......Miss Cornelius
Walter de la Mare................Drugged (poem)
Angus Wilson......Mummy to the Rescue
Grahame Greene Little Place off the Edgeware Road

V - APPARITIONS

J Sheridan Le Fanu....Green Tea
F Marion Crawford...The Upper Berth
Clifford Simak.......Skirmish

VI - THE DANCE OF DEATH

Charles Beaudelaire..............Dance of Death (poem & illustration)
John Dryden & Nathaniel Lee.....Holy-Day for Ghosts (poem)

Ambrose Bierce.......A Tough Tussle

Engraving from The Anatomy of Vesalius

Oscar Wilde........The Living Death (from The Ballad of Reading Gaol)
D B Wyndham Lewis.......Envoi


The 8 black and white plates are:

Goya's Saturn Devouring His Child
Horst Janssen's etching Cordula
Paul Klee's A Girl Possessed
Ivan Serpa's Figure IV
15th Century Mexican Aztec Mask
And Lovers attributed to Grünewald

*Phew*

demonik:
I got the Studio Vista hardback of this - sadly minus dust-jacket - and I was wondering how they'd cram everything into a paperback, but, if I've read you right, I think your post explains it Rog: they've ditched the colour plates?

I'd go along with "odd", but there are some superb - and just plain weird - stories. T. F. Powys The Hunted Beast falls into the former category as far as I'm concerned. Mr. Walter Gidden, Vicar of East Dodder, is so appalled at witnessing three children torturing a rabbit in a trap, that he attacks one of them and beats her to death. Horrified at what he's done, still he's determined not to be taken alive and drowns a puppy when it threatens to give him away - the first time he's ever harmed an animal in his life. 'Harrowing' doesn't really do it justice.

At the other end of the spectrum, 'P.S's An Actor Of Parts: Ernie becomes so engrossed in the roles he plays that he becomes them. It first occurs when he plays the Demon King, making him unbearable for his family to live with. He's more amenable during his stint as Puss in Dick Whittington, but he comes to a dreadful end when he returns home after his first night as the lead in Mother Goose ...


I had a feeling you might appreciate this one. A hardback with illustrations must still be worth a few bob.

You've brought back The Hunted Beast very strongly, although I probably haven't read this in years!

No colour illustrations here, that's right, just 8 pages of monochrome.

Peter C:
Agreed that The Hunted Beast is a really powerful story, but when I read it I got the impression that poor Revd. Gidden hadn't really hurt the child badly, but only thought he had, in a way making his desperate escape attempt even more tragic.

I'll go home tonight and re-read the story.

Victoria:This sounds like a great collection, and the plates sound superb. "Berenice" is my absolute favorite Poe (apart from his poem "Annabel Lee"; Whistler produced a beautiful painting based on this haunting tale of love and loss). I also love the Greene and Waugh entries - I'm not sure which collection of mine the Waugh is in but the Greene is collected in his brilliant "Twenty-One Stories", which contains some of the finest modern tales in the genre IMHO.

demonik:Spurred on by Peter's post, I tried a few more of these last night. I note that Victoria has already entered Graham Greene in the Favourite Authors category and it won't be long before William Fryer Harvey joins him. He's maybe best known for The Beast With Five Fingers and August Heat but Miss Cornelius is every bit their equal.

Scientist Andrew Saxton is asked by friends to investigate possible poltergeist activity at their home in Meadowfield Terrace. His conclusion - that their house guest, Miss Cornelius, perhaps unconsciously, is responsible for launching the flying cutlery and what have you when nobody's looking - earns him the elderly woman's emnity, and soon similar incidents are occurring in his own home. When a tube of sulphuric acid is lobbed in his direction, he catches his wife Molly in the act of throwing it ... or thinks he does. Whatever strange powers the thoroughly evil Miss Cornelius possesses, she refuses to leave the Saxons alone and takes to stalking Andrew. It all comes to a head when Andrew takes his impossibly patient wife to be seen by a psychiatrist ...

I'll leave A Little Place Off The Edgware Road to you, Vicky, as I know you'll do it justice.

Incidentally, the additional plates in the hardback embrace painting, sculpture and photography and make an already strange book that bit weirder:

Caravaggio Medusa
Edvard Munch The Scream
Hieronymus Bosh Hell (detail from ...)
Felicien Rops Satan Sewing Tares
Hans Arp Configuration
Pablo Picasso La Femme Qui Pleure
Henry Fuseli MacBeth And The Witches
Hans Bellmer The Doll
Hans Baldung Death And The Maiden
Rene Magritte Perspective
Joan Miro Woman Bird
Victor Brauner Kabiline In Movement
Peter Behan The Spectators
Michael Ayrton Restless Minotaur
Francis Picabia Hera
Paul Wunderlich Per Aspera Ad Astra
Joan Suzuki Drawing A
Salvador Dali The Dream (detail from ..)
Eduardo Paolozzi Crash
Felix Labisse Simon Le Magicien
Felicien Rops Death At The Ball
African Balega Mask
Peter Bruegel The Elder
Vincent Van Gogh The Prison Courtyard
Seven Headed Dragon Of The Apocalypse
19th Century Tibetan Bronze

demonik:
Charles Dickens - Captain Murderer: God, how I detested this on first acquaintance all those years ago! And now ... its not so bad, certainly far less twee than the unforgivable Story Of The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton. Captain Murderer is a Bluebeard type with a neat trick. Once wed, he gets his brides to roll him out a huge pastry little realising they're going to provide the filling.

Villiers De L'Isle Adam - The Desire To Be A Man: The actor Chaudval has reached the age of fifty and now the grey hairs are sprouting he's decided to retire from the stage and take up the post of lighthouse-keeper. But first, he wants to feel remorse. All great men feel remorse and all are haunted by the ghosts of their victims. So he sets a massive conflagration in which a hundred innocents are burnt to death and twice that number ruined. But it doesn't work.

D. B. Wyndham-Lewis - Envoi: The Squire tortures his guests at Merryweather Hall with five days of enforced Christmas "fun" until sleep-deprivation pushes young Ebbing and Crafter over the edge. They murder him to popular approval.[/color]

[David A. Riley]

This was a very strange and interesting book, which I remember buying when it first came out.

One of the illustrations, Lovers attributed to Grünewald, inspired me to write a short story, The Farmhouse - one of the very few occasions a picture has done that.

David

[dem]

Great book. I recently got to see the dust-jacket of the hardback - nothing to write home about, I'm afraid: no illustration, just the author's name and title in dayglo lettering on a black background if I remember correctly. They may still have a copy in the Eastcote bookshop where it was going for around a tenner (you'll find their address and contact details in the links column at the foot of the board if you're interested).

[Steve]

Here's a couple of cover scans;

Studio Vista hardback, 1965



Fontana paperback, 1970

[dem]

Pretty sure it was the Studio Vista one I was referring to, Steve. Strange how I didn't remember the skull.

[dem]

John Hadfield (ed.) - The Saturday Book #16 (Hutchinson, 1956)

"if I were asked to name the most terrifying ghost story ever written my answer would be The Wendigo ....

The Saturday Book (1941-1975) was Hutchinson's lavish annual miscellany of the arts, the post-war editions edited by John Hadfield who would later adopt it's format for the hard cover edition of Chamber Of Horrors. Of the four i've seen, the one of most interest to this board would be number 16 from 1956 where amid the meditations on Specimens Of Art & Nature, The Pleasure Of Snuff, The Well-Dressed Englishman A Hundred Years Ago and Thoughts On Fish, we find an Uneasy Pieces supplement comprising a John Betjeman poem, Lord Barton-Bendish concerning an unquiet mausoleum, Fred White's slight supernatural tale The Live Ghost and, head and shoulders above both, regular contributor L. T. C. Rolt's eight page essay on The Passing Of The Ghost Story, an astute critical appraisal of - primarily - Le Fanu, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, which culminates in a pot-shot at the contemporary The Third Ghost Book as offering only one decent story (!). He's not a big fan of psychic sleuths either. Also of note, Olive Cook & Edwin Smith's visually striking The Legend Of Bluebeard - told in scraps.

[oatcakeredux]

It always pleases me to find stories like Mr Loveday's Little Outing turning up in collections like this. There's a gently perverse pleasure in finding literary big names indulging in grue and nastiness - see Angus Wilson's Raspberry Jam for another favourite example of mine. The Waugh tale is definitely masterful stuff, although I suspect that Waugh wasn't overly keen on the idea of care in the community...

[ramseycampbell]

"...L. T. C. Rolt's eight page essay on The Passing Of The Ghost Story, an astute critical appraisal of - primarily - Le Fanu, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, which culminates in a pot-shot at the contemporary The Third Ghost Book as offering only one decent story..."

I hesitate to ask which one...

[dem]

Jul 9, 2012 21:04:11 GMT ramseycampbell said:

"...L. T. C. Rolt's eight page essay on The Passing Of The Ghost Story, an astute critical appraisal of - primarily - Le Fanu, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, which culminates in a pot-shot at the contemporary The Third Ghost Book as offering only one decent story..."

I hesitate to ask which one...

Here's the Third Ghost Book Table of contents. I wonder if Rolt's pick of the pile will be as big a surprise to you as it was me. If I've read it, can't say I remember anything about it.

One reviewer of this recent book maintained that the ghost story had no future because the number of possible plots was limited, that they had been worn out by over-use and were not in any case applicable or convincing in this materialistic atomic age. That the basic plots available are limited I agree, but that they are stale or inapplicable to the present day I most stoutly deny. On the contrary, never was a world so full of sinister possibilities awaiting exploitation. It is not without significance that the most successful story in the collection just referred to should be the one which is set most firmly in the present time. This is Michael Asquith's The Uninvited Face. Here the theme is as old as the hills - it is the same as that of Le Fanu's Green Tea - but the treatment, with the victim an atomic physicist, and the clever introduction of surrealism, is as modern as the hour.