Forthcoming Wordsworth Editions

[dem bones]

A quick update from Derek:

Wordsworth editions Mystery & Supernatural: scheduled releases through to Autumn 2010

• H. P. Lovecraft - The Horror In The Museum (January)
  
• James Rymer - Varney the Vampyre (January)
  
• David Stuart Davis - The Tangled Skein & The Shadow Of The Rat (February)
  
• James Diog (ed.) - Australian Ghost Stories (February)
  
• Bram Stoker - The Lair Of The White Worm & The Lady Of The Shroud(March)
  
• Gaston Leroux - The Mystery Of The Yellow Room (April)
  
• Robert W. Chambers - The King In Yellow (May)
  
• Edgar Wallace - The Casefiles of Mr J.G. Reeder (June)
  
• Amyas Northcote - In Ghostly Company (July)
  
• Oliver Onions - Dead Of Night: Ghost Stories Of (August)
  
• Aleister Crowley - The Drug & Other Stories (September)
  

... and a Bernard Capes collection is looking good for 2011

[andydecker]

You know, I couldn´t resist after reading about it here on the Vault and bought both Sherlock Holmes (Tangled Skein & The Game´s afoot) and the Hodgson. Very nice editions!

[dem bones]

A large orange notice on the window proudly proclaims Sex Shop Licence - Renewal Applied For. Ah, i do so look forward to my visits to Lovejoys on the corner of Charing Cross Road & Old Compton Street, top notch purveyors of smut and Wordsworth editions. This morning's visit was a bit disappointing - Australian Ghosts isn't in yet! - but i got Varney The Vampyre, Horror In The Museum and a few from the back-catalogue will be cluttering the board sooner or later. another plus point; Lovejoys knock 'em out at £2.50 a pop - you can't even get ten fags for that these days.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

The double-packaging of David Stuart Davies' "The Tangled Skein" and "The Shadow of the Rat" is a nice pairing. DSD was the editor of the now sadly departed "Sherlock Magazine" and really knows the characters of Holmes and Watson. Pitting them against Dracula for "Skein" might have been a difficult task (I've seen other authors fail here) but he pulls it off well, while "Rat", which I have in its Calabash Press edition, has mysterious black-clad noble-women, secret clubs and mesmerism and is a great read.

[andydecker]

Looks nice.

After reading about it here on the board I ordered some Wordsworth. Terrific work; you just wish other publishers would do such quality work.

[dem bones]

well, other publishers certainly do, but you wish they'd publish them at prices the majority can come up with rather than the affluent few - that's where Wordsworth score. i so, so sincerely hope it pisses off the elitists something rotten that the great unwashed have access to say, Gilchrist, the other Benson brothers, Caldecott, and at least three penny dreadfuls that would otherwise be the preserve of those few who could afford them.

Feb 11, 2010 19:09:46 GMT The Lurker In The Shadows said:

The double-packaging of David Stuart Davies' "The Tangled Skein" and "The Shadow of the Rat" is a nice pairing. DSD was the editor of the now sadly departed "Sherlock Magazine" and really knows the characters of Holmes and Watson. Pitting them against Dracula for "Skein" might have been a difficult task (I've seen other authors fail here) but he pulls it off well

surely a thread in itself, lurks, and to my very limited knowledge Holmes sometimes takes on - or indeed, on at least one occasion, is - Jack the Ripper! While we're at it, anybody got a copy of this? some familiar names among the contributors.

J. R. Campbell & Charles Prepolec (eds.) - Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales Of Sherlock Holmes (Edge, Nov. 2009)

Leslie S. Klinger - Foreword
Charles V. Prepolec - Introduction

Stephen Volk - Hounded
Lawrence C. Connolly - The Death Lantern
William Meikle - The Quality of Mercy
James A. Moore - Emily’s Kiss
William Patrick Maynard - The Tragic Case of the Child Prodigy
Hayden Trenholm - The Last Windigo
Neil Jackson - Celeste
Robert Lauderdale - The Best Laid Plans
Leigh Blackmore - Exalted are the Forces of Darkness
Mark Morris - The Affair of the Heart
Simon Kurt Unsworth - The Hand-Delivered Letter
Barbara Roden - Of the Origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles
J. R. Campbell - Mr. Other’s Children

Blurb:
THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON BAKER STREET!
Between the shadowy realms of fear and the unforgiving glare of science lies a battleground of unspeakable horror. In vile alleyways with blood-slick cobblestones, impenetrable fog, and the wan glow of gaslight, lurk the inhuman denizens of nightmare.

CAN REASON PREVAIL WHEN ELIMINATING
THE IMPOSSIBLE IS NO LONGER AN OPTION?
Faced with his worst fears, Sherlock Holmes has his faith in the science of observation and deduction shaken to the core in 13 all-new tales of terror from today's modern masters of the macabre!

[williemeikle]

Feb 12, 2010 21:43:54 GMT dem bones said:

While we're at it, anybody got a copy of this? some familiar names among the contributors.

J. R. Campbell & Charles Prepolec (eds.) - Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales Of Sherlock Holmes (Edge, Nov. 2009)

I got my contributor's copy :-)

The pick of the stories for me is Stephen Volk's Hounded... an aging Watson haunted by the Baskerville case. Very nicely done.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

Feb 12, 2010 21:43:54 GMT dem bones said:

surely a thread in itself, lurks, and to my very limited knowledge Holmes sometimes takes on - or indeed, on at least one occasion, is - Jack the Ripper!

You're right, a thread on supernatural/horror Holmes tales might be a good one - though it might look like me trying to plug my own supernatural Holmes collection, but I'm not about to let that stop me. Will try to get the ball rolling when I've got time to put some thought into it and do it justice.

In the meantime, here's an interesting site with synopses of hundreds of Holmes pastiches...
www.schoolandholmes.com/summariesa.html

[dem bones]

a few more details on this delicious forthcoming Wordsworth (September, i think). 49 stories!

Aleister Crowley - The Drug and Other Stories

With an introduction by William Breeze and a foreword by David Tibet.

This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). Crowley was a successful critic, editor and author of fiction from 1908 to 1922, and his short stories are long overdue for discovery. Of the forty-nine stories in the present volume, only thirty were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear here for the first time.

Like their author, Crowley’s stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places he had lived and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the first World War. The title story ‘The Drug’ stands as one of the first—if not the first—accounts of a psychedelic experience. His ‘Black and Silver’ is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. ‘Atlantis’ is a masterpiece of occult fantasy, a dark satire that can stand with Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Frank Harris considered ‘The Testament of Magdalen Blair’ the most terrifying tale ever written.

Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.

[dem bones]

Book of the week on Wordsworth Editions so any day now. 627 pages! As with the Crowley (above) will give this its own thread once the TOC are known.

Oliver Onions - Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories (August 15, 2010)

Blurb:
Introduction by David Stuart Davies. Oliver Onions is unique in the realms of ghost story writers in that his tales are so far ranging in their background and substance that they are not easily categorised. His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives. This collection contains such masterpieces as The Rosewood Door, The Ascending Dream, The Painted Face, and The Beckoning Fair One, a story which both Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft regarded as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature. Long out of print, these classic tales are a treasure trove of nightmarish gems.

[Steve]

Very much looking forward to both of these, particularly the Crowley as - at some risk of ridicule - I've always rated his shorter fiction. With its 49 stories, many of which "appear here for the first time", The Drug is potentially a very exciting proposal indeed. Will it lead to a long overdue critical reappraisal of Crowley as a writer? Probably not, as opinion one way or the other seems far too deeply entrenched for anyone to be shifting their position at this stage in the game and Crowley himself has long since passed into the realms of Godhood or grotesque self-parody depending how one is inclined towards the old bugger. Does anyone know yet if this collection includes the Simon Iff stuff?
Other than 'The Beckoning Fair One', I must admit I don't really know my Onions (excuse the abysmal pun) that well. I suspect this new collection will largely be an exercise in seeing just how well the rest of his oeuvre measures up.

[Dr Strange]

RE: Crowley, I've only read a very few of his short stories (but I did wade through both Diary of A Drug Fiend and The Moonchild in my younger days). But I also read somewhere that he wrote some very scathing reviews of other authors' works (I think I remember Algernon Blackwood mentioned) - I would love to read those, but I don't even know where they were published (but probably somewhere obscure, like The Equinox).

RE: Onions, I've got a reprint of Widdershins that I read a while back but don't remember an awful lot about now. I will probably buy the Wordsworth though.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Until I hear otherwise, I shall assume the Wordsworth book has exactly the same contents as the Tartarus Onions volume, which I already own.

[cw67q]

Aug 15, 2010 13:44:18 GMT Jojo Lapin X said:

Until I hear otherwise, I shall assume the Wordsworth book has exactly the same contents as the Tartarus Onions volume, which I already own.

The intention was to at include "Two Trifles" (2 humourous vignettes) and "the Master of the House" a novella, neither of which made the cut to the Tartarus volume. Maybe other peices too such as possible "Tragic Casements" which is in the 2nd, but not 1st tartarus edition.

- chris

[dem bones]

Aug 15, 2010 6:08:10 GMT Steve said:

Other than 'The Beckoning Fair One', I must admit I don't really know my Onions (excuse the abysmal pun) that well. I suspect this new collection will largely be an exercise in seeing just how well the rest of his oeuvre measures up.

I've read quite a few here and there, nothing that made anything like the same impact as The Beckoning Fair One, but two of the longer pieces alone are worth the £2.99, The Master Of The House and The Rope In The Rafters (hows that for a portentous title?). From memory, The Cigarette Case is a pleasant enough, very gentle ghost story, so too The Rocker. If the Two Trifles were amusing in their day, they haven't worn well. By some trick of word association, mention Rooum and i immediately think of Ramsey Campbell's Run Through, even though it's maybe 15 years since i read either and both are now the vaguest memories.

Haven't seen a contents list for The Drug yet Steve, but i'm guessing that Iff will be represented - the biggest surprise to me is that Crowley wrote so many shorts. Dave Tibet was in Psychic TV at some stage wasn't he? actually, i think he was a member when Gen had to get out of the country following that phony 'Satanic Abuse' expose on TV. I'm fairly certain DT was also a subscriber to Ghosts & Scholars!