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Post by David A. Riley on May 15, 2009 7:56:28 GMT
Just got my copy of the Midnight House collection, The Harlem Horror this morning, for my first serious dip into the short stories of Sir Charles Birkin. I think I'll be having a long look at his stories this weekend. Hope my nerves can take it!  David |
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Post by thebluelizard on May 16, 2009 21:46:51 GMT
Just got my copy of the Midnight House collection, The Harlem Horror this morning, for my first serious dip into the short stories of Sir Charles Birkin. I think I'll be having a long look at his stories this weekend. Hope my nerves can take it! David David -- Enjoy! You're in for a treat -- at his best, Birkin is one of the very best. The selections in the other Midnight House Birkin collection, A HAUNTING BEAUTY, represent the works he personally thought were his finest. --Dennis |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Sept 10, 2011 19:56:19 GMT
Not quite sure where to post this, but the sheer joy of having read a 'new' Birkin story has to be shared somewhere!
Marjorie's On Starlight: Two eleven year old girls riding their ponies - what could be more innocent and heartwarming? Except that one is pretty little Cynthia who hates the fact that fat, ungainly spectacle-wearing Marjorie (whose looks are unlikely to improve with age, Mr Birkin kindly informs us) has had to come to live with her. Oh, and Marjorie's mother's just died but Cynthia has been told by her mother not to reveal that fact as it may distress the child. All might still be okay but oh no what's that? A massive road roller flattening tarmac in the lane at the bottom of the field? And does Marjorie's horse look as if it's going to throw her? Oh my goodness what could possibly happen now?
One of the things I truly love about Birkin is how he hates EVERYONE. In a tale like this no-one is left untarnished - Cynthia is spiteful but Marjorie seemingly deserves her fate because she's fat and stupid and an orphan, but the horror would not occur without Cynthia's mother's thoughtlessness at leaving the girls on their own. Even the irrelevant music teacher at the start is an utter cow who you know probably has an unfaithful husband tied up at home with all his teeth pulled out while a tap drips icy water on his head (no idea where that came from). Oh, how the world needs more stories like this one.
Birkin's writing style also yields some interesting clues as to his..er..personality. He has a worryingly good ear for spitefully nasty dialogue, and his lengthy descriptions of the flora of the hedgerows make you wonder if when he was the kind of chap who would have cheerfully burnt alive any child who dared to look at his pressed flower book. After reading this story one wonders more and more if he wasn't the mastermind behind the infamous Slave Girls of War Orphan Farm, et al. But that's for another time.
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Post by dem on Sept 13, 2011 6:44:21 GMT
This masterpiece of the sick and twisted really should be better known and i'm dead pleased to get another take on it. i'm guessing you knew what was coming as soon as Birkin spotted the road roller up ahead but the sheer inevitability somehow only adds to the hilar ..., i mean "tragedy." To the best of my knowledge it's one of five Birkin stories that were never collected. Marjorie's On Starlight from Hugh Lamb (ed.) - A Wave Of Fear, (W. H. Allen, 1973, Coronet 1976) Dinner In A Private Room from Hugh Lamb (ed.) - Cold Fear: New Tales Of Terror, (W. H. Allen, 1977) The Medicine Cupboard from Charles Birkin (ed.) - The Tandem Book Of Horror Stories, (Tandem, 1965) Zara And Zita from Charles Birkin (ed.) - The Tandem Book Of Ghost Stories, (Tandem, 1965) . Very different for Birkin. A gentle ghost story featuring a character who may or may not be based on his friend Dennis Wheatley. A Low Profile from Mary Danby (ed.) The 10th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories, (Fontana, 1977) |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 26, 2012 17:16:37 GMT
An entertaining read in a similar vein is Frank Walford's Twisted Clay, first published in 1922 and banned here in Australia for 30 years. It was reprinted a few times by Horwitz in the 1960s. It's about a precocious 15 year old lesbian who murders her father when she learns he wants to take her to Europe to undergo experimental hormone treatment to cure her. She suffers bouts of insanity during which she is compelled by the ghost of her father to dig him up and plug the hole in the back of his head (he complains his brains are falling out, you see). When she's caught digging him up for the second time she's committed to an asylum. When she escapes she takes to prostitution and acquires a taste for murdering her clients Jill-the-Ripper style. After that it gets silly... I've read the first three chapters of Twisted Clay, and it's an absolute riot so far. It's told from the point of view of a character who is already my favorite homicidal female teenage narrator since Mary Katherine Blackwood of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The tone resembles the savage misanthropic humor of Ambrose Bierce's more tongue-in-check stories (e.g., "A Bottomless Grave," "My Favorite Murder," "Oil of Dog") and Shirley Jackson's The Sundial. And I've only made it to the point when she first realizes that she's a lesbian! |
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rob4
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 104
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Post by rob4 on Jan 13, 2015 15:01:35 GMT
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 13, 2015 17:39:32 GMT
Unless I have gone senile it's now available from the inimitable Johnny Mains I think - on here somewhere |
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 13, 2015 20:45:35 GMT
Unless I have gone senile it's now available from the inimitable Johnny Mains I think - on here somewhere [/quote] That's right - Johnny brought it out in his Remains [cunning pun] imprint, including that Kindle version by the look of it. |
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Post by Dr Terror on Jan 24, 2015 16:24:54 GMT
I believe I may have solved the Death Spawn mystery.
In Marshall B. Tymn's Horror Literature it's listed as a 1968 release, and from the story titles mentioned as being contained in it, it would appear to be a wrongly titled entry for Dark Menace.
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Post by dem on Jan 25, 2015 4:31:15 GMT
I believe I may have solved the Death Spawn mystery. In Marshall B. Tymn's Horror Literature it's listed as a 1968 release, and from the story titles mentioned as being contained in it, it would appear to be a wrongly titled entry for Dark Menace.I reckon you've nailed it, Dr. Terror. The next reference to Death Spawn seems to be TED Klein's appraisal of Birkin's work in The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror & The Supernatural (1986), so its highly likely Horror Literature (1981) was his source. After which, Fantastic Fiction & Co picked up on it. Perhaps most tellingly of all, Mike Ashley - a Birkin fan - makes no mention of any Death Spawn in Who's Who In Horror & Fantasy Fiction (1977). The bastard of it is, I still want the book to exist, but like 'Peter Saxon's Brother Blood, it is almost certainly a ghost. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2015 13:30:25 GMT
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Post by David A. Riley on Sept 10, 2015 14:29:14 GMT
That's an absolutely amazing find. Well done. Green with envy.  |
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Post by andydecker on Sept 10, 2015 18:38:57 GMT
Wow.
If you read something like that in a novel you would think it unbelievable.  Two letters in a book changing hands for 30 years or more? What are the odds?
Congratulations for a great find.
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Post by dem on Sept 10, 2015 18:45:41 GMT
He had lovely handwriting!
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Post by jamesdoig on Sept 11, 2015 20:51:59 GMT
Picked this up last year for £19.99 from Oxfam's online site. You lucky sod! That book wasn't even in the Blackwell's catalogue of Wheatley's book collection after he died - Christ knows how it got to Oxfam. |
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Two letters in a book changing hands for 30 years or more? What are the odds?