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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 8, 2011 15:01:06 GMT
Randalls Round - Eleanor Scott (Ernest Benn, 1929; Ash-Tree Press, 1996; Oleander Press, 2010) Foreword
Randalls Round
The Twelve Apostles
Celui-la
The Room
The Cure
The Tree
At Simmel Acres Farm
"Will Ye No' Come Back Again?"
The Old Lady
Afterword, by Richard DalbyThe first edition of this book appears to be impossible to get hold of, and I've never seen a copy of the Ash-Tree Press edition on sale for less than £100, so it's rather a nice surprise to see a new paperback edition at the more reasonable (if not quite Wordsworth-level) price of £8.95. This edition also comes with a handsome Randalls Round bookmark (be the envy of all your friends!). As has been mentioned on another thread, Oleander Press have also published editions of Stoneground Ghost Tales by E. G. Swain and Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye by Ingulphus (Arthur Gray), and it looks like they're planning a new edition of Adrian Ross's excellent The Hole of the Pit. Very welcome.
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Post by dem on Jan 8, 2011 20:12:12 GMT
For me this is their most welcome of the Oleander Press reprints to date and i'll probably even find a way to get hold of a copy! I like the Stoneground Ghost Stories well enough, but E. G. Swain is so gentle he makes Alice & Claude Askew seem like Michael Slade in comparison and read one after the other, they get a bit samey. Have you read David G. Rowlands' continuation of Mr. Batchel's adventures? I've sampled maybe half of the Ingulphus collection, but only The True History of Anthony Ffryar made any lasting impression, though its fair to say i've not revisited him in ages. Dare I say it, but there is such a thing as being too Jamesian? I remember struggling (and failing) to write up The Hole of the Pit after Ramsey Campbell exhumed it for his seriously eclectic Uncanny Banquet anthology. |
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 8, 2011 22:10:16 GMT
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Post by jonathan122 on Jan 8, 2011 22:10:25 GMT
For me this is their most welcome of the Oleander Press reprints to date and i'll probably even find a way to get hold of a copy! I like the Stoneground Ghost Stories well enough, but E. G. Swain is so gentle he makes Claude & Cynthia Askew look like Michael Slade in comparison and read one after the other, they get a bit samey. Have you read David G. Rowlands' continuation of Mr. Batchel's adventures? I've sampled maybe half of the Ingulphus collection, but only The True History of Anthony Ffryar made any lasting impression, though its fair to say i've not revisited him in ages. Dare I say it, but there is such a thing as being too Jamesian? I remember struggling (and failing) to write up The Hole of the Pit after Ramsey Campbell exhumed it for his seriously eclectic Uncanny Banquet anthology. Neither Swain nor Gray have ever done much for me either, and I agree about some authors being too Jamesian; I like Rolt and Wakefield (and, indeed, Eleanor Scott), but, although it's obvious that they've read James, and occasionally stolen a plot from him, they're not actually going out of their way to sound like him. I've never read any of Rowland's Stoneground tales, but I think I've read some of his other stories. I loved The Hole of the Pit, and pretty much all of Uncanny Banquet, possibly one of my favourite anthologies. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jan 9, 2011 13:56:08 GMT
I've never heard of Oleander Press either but if they're reprinting hard to get stuff at affordable prices then hooray! I'll look out for this one.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 9, 2011 23:34:07 GMT
Is it just my imagination or are there loads of publishers specialising in the perfect-bound public domain POD book - Kessinger, Dodo, Leonaur, Coachwhip, Ramble House etc etc? Must really hurt the deluxe specialty presses who used to do such books - now most of them focus on original collections.
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Post by monker on Jan 10, 2011 1:59:06 GMT
I'll be waiting for Amazon UK to restock Randalls Round... Uncanny Banquet has a classic each from Russel Kirk and, particularly, Fritz Leiber. I lost my copy after reading those two, so, beyond that, I'm none the wiser. I don't think anyone has come close to James unless, of course, they are directly pastiching him.  Some of the James school take the 'ghost' element in the stories a lot more literally than James ever did and that can often be dull. |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 10, 2011 10:57:06 GMT
The plot of Scott's The Twelve Apostles owes a lot to The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M.R. James. However, as I read the Scott story first, and I didn't know what was going to happen, the ending gave me a real jolt. As a result, it is my favourite of Scott's stories.
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Post by cw67q on Jan 10, 2011 12:15:32 GMT
These guys are picking good collections to reprint. Randalls Round is worth a read although it isn't as good as Rolt's Sleep No More (which I saw on a shelf in Waterstones, Glasgow yesterday). Celui la gets all the praise usually and is a fine read until the cop out ending which undermines the entire story (Grrrrr  ). My favourite is the Wickermanesque title story which some others find under-developed, but I think leaves just the right amount unsaid. Almost forgot to say: I'm with everone on Uncanny Banquet, a really superb anthology from Mr RC. I read this when it first came out and Robert Aickman's story Ravissante haunted me for years. It was a long time afterwards when I returned to genre fiction and looked around for recommendations on the web that I picked up the Unsettled Dust and reread the story. I was delighted to rediscover it as I'd long forgotten the titel author and collection where I'd first encountered it. It remains my personal favourite of Aickman's tales, I can't put my finger on why the ending is so devastatingly effective. I think the same authors the Clockwatcher works in a very similar manner, the final lines working in a very similar manner to the same ends (at least for this reader). - Chris |
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Post by dem on Jan 10, 2011 13:15:53 GMT
for me, one of the most intriguing mysteries surrounding Eleanor Scott was raised by Richard Dalby in Ghosts & Scholars #18, who wonders aloud whether she contributed to the Creeps series under a variety of pseudonyms, not least of them 'N. Dennett'. The opening post on the 3rd Pan Book Of Horror thread goes into it in some detail. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 10, 2011 15:49:49 GMT
It remains my personal favourite of Aickman's tales, I can't put my finger on why the ending is so devastatingly effective. I think the same authors the Clockwatcher works in a very similar manner, the final lines working in a very similar manner to the same ends (at least for this reader). I have developed the unfortunate habit of paraphrasing the final lines of "Ravissante" in all sorts of contexts, in a slightly hysterical tone of voice. It annoys and confuses people like you would not believe. |
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Post by cw67q on Jan 11, 2011 8:17:33 GMT
It remains my personal favourite of Aickman's tales, I can't put my finger on why the ending is so devastatingly effective. I think the same authors the Clockwatcher works in a very similar manner, the final lines working in a very similar manner to the same ends (at least for this reader). I have developed the unfortunate habit of paraphrasing the final lines of "Ravissante" in all sorts of contexts, in a slightly hysterical tone of voice. It annoys and confuses people like you would not believe. People can be so odd (Chris replied somewhat ambiguously, one nervous eye on the door). |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 7, 2020 13:48:00 GMT
The plot of Scott's The Twelve Apostles owes a lot to The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M.R. James. However, as I read the Scott story first, and I didn't know what was going to happen, the ending gave me a real jolt. As a result, it is my favourite of Scott's stories. I've just re-read "The Twelve Apostles". It more than owes a lot to "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". It's a blatant rip-off! However, it is differently structured than the original and contains many new touches that make it superior to the more-anthologised "Celui-La", itself a rip-off of "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'". |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 13, 2020 14:43:23 GMT
The plot of Scott's The Twelve Apostles owes a lot to The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by M.R. James. However, as I read the Scott story first, and I didn't know what was going to happen, the ending gave me a real jolt. As a result, it is my favourite of Scott's stories. I've just re-read "The Twelve Apostles". It more than owes a lot to "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". It's a blatant rip-off! However, it is differently structured than the original and contains many new touches that make it superior to the more-anthologised "Celui-La", itself a rip-off of "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'". Here's a funny thing. I've always thought that the cover for the 1929 edition of Randalls Round looks like it was drawn by Alan Hunter who contributed many illustrations to Ghosts & Scholars.  |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 11, 2021 10:16:46 GMT
Randalls Round: Nine Nightmares by Eleanor Scott (British Library Tales of the Weird, 16 Sept. 2021).  As explained on Amazon there are actually eleven nightmares. A malignant entity answers the call of an ancient curse on the coast of Brittany; a traveller’s curiosity delivers him to an abominable Hallowe’en ritual; the curious new owner of a haunted mansion discovers something far worse than ghosts in the night. Randalls Round has long been revered by devotees of the weird tale. First published in 1929, its stories of ritualistic folk horror and M. R. James-inspired accounts of ancient forces terrorising humanity are thoroughly deserving of wider recognition. This collection includes a new introduction exploring Eleanor Scott’s impact on weird and folk horror fiction, and two chilling stories by N. Dennett – speculated [by Richard Dalby] to be another of the author’s pseudonyms.The stories by N. Dennett are "The Menhir" and "Unburied Bane" included by Richard Dalby in The Sorceress in Stained Glass and Tales of Witchcraft respectively.
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Some of the James school take the 'ghost' element in the stories a lot more literally than James ever did and that can often be dull. 
). My favourite is the Wickermanesque title story which some others find under-developed, but I think leaves just the right amount unsaid. 