James Doig - Australian Ghost Stories

[dem]

Feb 26, 2009 9:55:45 GMT wordswortheditions said:

One last thing before I go...
We've been approached about doing a collection of Australian ghost stories - would there be any interest for it?

And, almost a year to the day later, here it is!

James Doig (ed.) - Australian Ghost Stories (Wordsworth Editions, Feb., 2010).

Peter Nabarlambari, Sugar Bag Man

James Doig - Introduction
List Of Authors

Mary Fortune - The White Maniac: A Doctor's Tale
Ernest Favenc - Spirit-Led
Ernest Favenc - A Haunt of the Jinkarras
Marcus Clarke - The Mystery Of Major Molineux
Rosa Campbell Praed - The Bunyip
Louis Becke - Lupton's Guest: A Memory of the Eastern Pacific
Edward Wheatley - The Haunted Pool: A Tale Of The Blue Mountains
Fergus Hume - A Colonial Banshee
H. B. Marriott-Watson - The Devil Of The Marsh
Edward Dyson - The Accursed Thing
Henry Lawson - The Third Murder: A New South Wales Tale
Guy Boothby - The Death Child
Guy Boothby - A Strange Goldfield
Roderick Quinn - Sea Voices
Beatrice Grimshaw - The Cave
James Francis Dwyer - The Cave of the Invisible
Dulcie Dreamer - Hallowe'en


Blurb:
Murderous ghosts, horrific curses and monstrous beings haunt an unforgiving landscape into which travellers stray at their peril. Journey through the dark byways of Australia's Gothic past in the rare stories gathered in this memorable new collection. Work by acclaimed Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and Edward Dyson appears alongside many lesser-known authors such as Beatrice Grimshaw, Mary Fortune and Ernest Favenc. Many of the stories collected here have never been reprinted since their first publication in 19th and early 20th century periodicals and showcase the richness and variety of the Australian ghost and horror story.

James Doig provides an authoritative introduction full of fresh insights into Australian Gothic fiction with detailed biographical notes on the authors represented.



Have only had this for long enough to read the intriguing introduction and am much looking forward to getting stuck into the rest. I've fond memories of H. B. Marriott-Watson's superbly creepy The Devil of the Marsh and Guy 'Dr. Nikola' Boothby's A Strange Goldfield from Hugh Lamb's Victorian Nightmares but the rest of the stories are a complete mystery to me.

congratulations, and very well done, James!

[jamesdoig]

Thanks Dem

Hopefully there's an interesting mix of stories there - scientific mystery ("The While Maniac", "The Mystery of Major Molyneux"), lost race ("A Haunt of the Jinkarras"), realist stories ("The Accursed Thing", "The Third Murder"), stories from the pulps ("The Cave", "The Cave of the Invisible"), English decadence ("Devil of the Marsh") as well as lots of ghost stories and supernatural horror.

My favourite is probably the longish "Mystery of Major Molineux", a forgotten gem in my opinion. Close behind is Dulcie Deamer's "Hallowe'en" - a feminist werewolf tale in lush decadent prose.

[dem]

Have put Australian Ghost Stories on heavy rotation with Couching At The Door, Gothic Horror Stories and, just to mess my head up, James Moffat's Queen Kong!

"Famously, he asked a Melbourne bookseller what kind of fiction was selling and being told that the detective stories of Gaboriau were in vogue, he wrote The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab. Hume was paid £50 for the outright sale of copyright and subsequently claimed he never received another cent from the book although it became a great bestseller in England." - James Doig, introducing Fergus Hume's A Colonial Banshee.

Victorian Fiction: An Exhibition of Original Editions at 7 Albermarle Street, London, January - February 1947

Arranged by John Carter with the collaboration of Michael Sadlier

Published for the National Book League by the Cambridge University Press, 1947.

Ordinary edition, wrappers .... 2s net.
Illustrated edition, cloth .... 6s net.

Not sure if it's of interest, but i found this catalogue in a junk shop quite some time ago (sadly, it's only an "ordinary edition") and, among the entries for in the Sensation, Mystery & Crime section is the following concerning The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab. Hume may not have made any cash from it, but one big-shot entrepreneur seems to have lined his pockets.

[jamesdoig]

Nice find! Michael Sadleir's 2 volume Nineteenth Century Fiction was the inspiration behind George Locke's Spectrum of Fantasy.

[monker]

Amazon UK are already out of stock with this one. There is a bit of overlap with the two Equilibrium volumes but seeing as this one is meant to reach a wider audience this is understandable and to be expected.

Speaking of Australian authors or authors with an Australian connection, I'd like to see individual collections of both Hume Nisbet and Vernon Knowles. Not that I've read much of either. I know the former could be possible from Wordsworth.

[jamesdoig]

Yes, that's right - it'll probably be the only chance I get to do a mass market anthology of Australian stuff, so I thought I'd pick my faves.

Mark Valentine has a particular interest in Knowles, and hopefully will do a volume. I reckon Dem should edit Hume Nisbet - he's put together a list of his best stories for the vault.

[dem]

Have only read Hume Nisbet five greatest hits so i'd be rubbish. But if those seen are typical of the rest then I'm very fond of his brand of late Victorian horror melodrama and a Wordsworth would be welcome, especially if selected and introduced by someone who's researched him and is familiar with his two (?) weird collections. Think you can see where I'm going with this?

Vernon Knowles is a new name on me although Mr. Valentine has included something called The Curious Activities of Basil Thorpenton in his supernatural sleuths selection The Black Veil, haven't made a start on that one yet.

As to Australian Ghost Stories: cannibalism, premature burial and a squelchy M. Valdemar moment - and I'm only two stories in!

[monker]

You mean you are chickening out, Dem?

Yeah, Knowles is a new name to me too but I'm slightly intrigued, however, I think the majority of his stuff may be whimsical fantasy.

[jamesdoig]

Dem, I can supply you with a few other Nisbet supernatural tales, and away you go...There's also a collection called Mistletoe Manor that I haven't read. I guess the problem is not knowing if anyone is interested in publishing a Hume Nisbet collection - who's to say how it would sell?

[jamesdoig]

Whimsical fantasy is spot on - doesn't really have that nasty streak

[dem]

That all important nasty streak. glad to see you've not short-changed us in that department, Mr. Doig!

When you consider some of the slightly obscure titles Wordsworth have brought back into print - the Askews' Aylmer Vance collection, Baldwin & Gailbrath, Gilchrist, D. K. Broster, etc., - Hume Nisbet should be in with a fighting chance. But he's an important early figure in Aus weird fiction and i think he should be introduced by one of his countrymen.

it's impossible (for me, at least) to do justice to this pair without resorting to dirty great spoilers, so lets just say that by the time you've finished them you know you've read a horror story.

Mary Fortune - The White Maniac: A Doctor's Tale: Kensington, West London. Dr. Charles Elveston falls in love with his beautiful young patient, Princess Blanche D'Alberville, despite her guardian's dire warning that she is a dangerous lunatic. "The sight of one colour has such an effect on the miserable girl that we have found out, by bitter experience, the only way to avoid a repetition of the most fearful tragedies is to keep every hue or shade away from her vision ..."

Consequently, Blanche is little more than a prisoner, incarcerated in a white room in a white house and grounds (the doctor is obliged to change into a white suit when he visits her). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elveston suspects that it is her guardian, the Duke de Rohan, who is the insane party and tells him so. Forced into a corner, the Duke retaliates by revealing exactly what Blanche is capable of. Now Elveston knows for certain that the old boy is hopelessly gaga. No woman, least of all his poor, innocent intended bride, could commit such bestial acts!

Ernest Favenc - Spirit-Led: When Maxwell last went prospecting with Bennett, he suffered a cataleptic episode and was buried prematurely, only just returning from the astral in time to fight himself free of the grave. It wasn't this terrifying ordeal that sent his hair white, however, but the weird visions he experienced while he was 'dead'. These same visions convinced him that there's gold to be found at a gloomy gorge on the Nicholson River, and, some years on, he and Bennett set out to find it. The ghost girl who has haunted him all this time urges them to 'go back' but, happily for us, they ignore her ....

H. B. Marriott-Watson - The Devil Of The Marsh:

Aug 15, 2009 7:01:45 GMT jamesdoig said:

.

Spine-Tingling Tales, Horwitz, 1962, featuring Frank Bernier's stunning cover depiction of The Devil of the Marsh

The narrator keeps his late night tryst with the beautiful lady of the marsh. Through the mist, he glimpses his predecessor, a skeletal, toad-like thing that once was man before she drained the life from him. But still he wants her. It is only after he's watched his beloved gloatingly drown the wretch in the swamp that he comes to his senses.

it seems very strange to me now, but the more i think about it, this story changed my life! the very first horror book i read was the Coronet paperback edition of Hugh Lamb's Victorian Nightmares, borrowed from the local library when i was about 15. It's dead lucky that The Devil Of The Marsh opens Hugh's book as there's not much of it, five pages, and i doubt my attention span would have handled anything more substantial. i think i'd struggled through Fall Of The House Of Usher before then ("bloody hell, this blokes more boring than Shakespeare !") but The Devil Of The Marsh was something else: the setting, the atmosphere, the beautiful devil girl and her cruelly deformed victim had me hooked and i continued with the anthology. H. B. Marriott-Watson sure has a lot to answer for.

[jamesdoig]

Here's a nice photo of Marriott Watson from The Bookman.



Around the time he wrote "The Devil of the Marsh" he was having an unhappy affair with Violet Hunt, and it may be that the story reflected his feelings at the time. She was no mean writer of ghost stories herself.

[dem]

the only other Marriott-Watson I've read is the other famous one, his vampire outing The Stone Chamber. Was going to ask you if there was enough of his supernatural fiction for a collection. but then turned to the Tartarus site and sure enough, The Devil of the Marsh and Other Stories (Ash-Tree Press, 2004) and a reproduction of the cover, "image courtesy of James Doig!! It's a beauty, that; who painted it?

The Devil Of The Marsh was reprinted in Magazine Of Horror #7 (Health Knowledge, Jan. 1965), where it's credited to 'E. B. Marriott-Watson' and Robert A W Lowndes contributes this short introduction:

The Victorians loved to dwell upon the mood of horror and strangeness at great length, and sometimes to little purpose. However, as this example suggests, they were capable of powerful effects at times.

artist uncredited

Not sure if the cover painting was inspired by the story, but in my worst moments I believe it was.

Sorely missed Vault hero Peter Haining included the story (now retitled The Witch Of The Marsh) in his all woman authors (!) collection A Circle Of Witches: An Anthology Of Victorian Witchcraft Stories (Robert Hale, 1971). In his hands, Lowndes's 'E. B. Marriott-Watson' became "Mrs. Ethel Marriott-Watson (1858-1903)" who "was born and lived for most of her life in a remote area of Cornwall .... she contributed a great deal of poetry to women's weekly newspapers and magazines, but her fictional tales are few and far between."

[jamesdoig]

Keith Minnion did the cover - here's a lst of his credits: www.keithminnion.com/illustration-index/

[jamesdoig]

That bit about Ethel marriott watson is brilliant He must have had fun making that up. "...few and far between"indeed!