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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 9, 2016 16:24:18 GMT
perhaps one of the best covers I've seen in a long while. Indeed. It is like actual art or something. Very much so. Anyway, that's my second Valancourt book of 2016 ordered. Am very much looking forward to reading this.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 10, 2016 10:15:54 GMT
This new collection looks great again - with perhaps one of the best covers I've seen in a long while. I reckon it's from the original dust jacket.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 10, 2016 11:23:23 GMT
This new collection looks great again - with perhaps one of the best covers I've seen in a long while. I reckon it's from the original dust jacket. It is. Burke's work is now in the public domain, and am currently pestering Valancourt to compile a volume of his uncollected macabre shorts as I reckon it would make for another cracking volume. Birkin, Burke, J. U. Nicolson - Valancourt have delivered on more Vault suggestions than Wordsworth managed, and we may yet even see some Archie Roy reprints, so there's hope!
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 10, 2016 12:39:59 GMT
Yes, they're good - nice production values and great introductions by knowledgeable people.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 29, 2016 11:56:40 GMT
I picked up a copy of Limehouse Nights last month when in Rochester, and have just read it. It confirms that I am truly an idiot for going 50 years of my life before discovering Thomas Burke. The style and descriptive passages are so evocative that it takes me to a London I never actually knew, but feel I can still see every time I take the DLR from Stratford to Greenwich (like tomorrow morning, actually). The Chink And The Child is the most well known story, I guess, because of its silent movie heritage and being so often anthologised, yet despite being the first story here, it's actually little more than an hors d'ouvres (spelt wrongly, probably) for the rest of the book. The Paw is horribly chilling in its description of torture - both physical and psychological - and manipulation, while The Bird has the nastiest ending I've read for a long while (though perhaps that says more about what I've been reading lately). In Gina Of the Chinatown we have one of Burke's love-letters to the music halls which - if you have an interest in them - will entrance. I love Burke's purple and poetic style, his love of the squalor of Poplar in which he can see beauty, and the desperate - in so many ways - characters that people his London. I love it so much I can only fail to be objective. For me, one of the most evocative writers of that period, with all the faults (the inclination to flights of fancy and the retro-engineered outrage at the perceived racism that for the most part is only the kind of scathing eye he also brings to 'native' white Eastenders)doing little more than enhancing the glorious qualities with which they contrast.
(As an aside, I got this at Baggins Book Bazaar, which trumpets that it's the largest second hand bookshop in the UK. It is - two shops joined together, with two floors and a mezzanine packed with stock. And I'll tell you why: because anyone with any sense would baulk at some of the prices. Not because they are out of line with general second hand dealers per se, but because the shop was incredibly cold and damp and this has affected the stock - certainly in the hardback fiction and juvenile sections. Granted it was a rainy, cold day. However, they had a few paltry heaters that didn't work for the whole two buildings. A lot of the books I looked at were clammy and starting to badly fox - even those that weren't that old.One or two pre-war hardbacks were falling apart from the damage incurred (and still priced at a fiver). I paid £8.50 for the Burke, which is a fair price for the edition and condition, but it was one of the few things in there that didn't smell of damp. The state of the place saddened me.)
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Post by pulphack on Mar 1, 2016 6:50:32 GMT
It also strikes me, as an aside, that the tale in this volume entitled The Gorilla And The Girl could almost be described as the ur-text for Ed Wood's entire career... except that it transpires that there IS no gorilla... or is there?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 1, 2016 9:18:07 GMT
I have so got to slither up to Mrs. Dem so I can borrow her copy again! The style and descriptive passages are so evocative that it takes me to a London I never actually knew, but feel I can still see every time I take the DLR from Stratford to Greenwich (like tomorrow morning, actually). Ironically, it was the DLR that did for perhaps Burke country's most notorious landmark, Charlie Browns pub just along from Limehouse police station (the irony). "A bit rough" didn't begin to cover it. The seating consisted of two park benches, and that was the classy touch. The place oozed history, type of landmark that should have had a preservation order slapped on it, likewise it's neighbour directly opposite, The Blue Posts (later The Buccaneer). They were both demolished to make way for the new railway.
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