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Post by dem bones on Nov 2, 2011 19:50:36 GMT
Many thanks to Derek at Wordsworth for granting us a sneak preview of the Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural titles for 2012! As follows: - Aleister Crowley - The Simon Iff Stories & Other Works (March)
- Edgar Wallace - The Complete Four Just Men (May)
- E. F. Benson - Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories Of. (June)
- Maurice LeBlanc - An Arsene Lupin Omnibus (July)
- Henry S. Whitehead - Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories Of. (August)
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Post by David A. Riley on Nov 3, 2011 10:31:44 GMT
That's a mouth watering lineup, and I'll definitely go for the Benson and Whitehead volumes. Not so sure about the Crowley. I've tried to read one of his novels and found it hard going. It reads like he is certain he is so incredibly clever and is showing off. Perhaps that's part of what I should read as his charm... I don't know anything about Maurice LeBlanc and Arsene Lupin. Which may be good enough reasons to get this too.
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Post by pulphack on Nov 3, 2011 12:23:14 GMT
The Four Just Men is worth a look - no creepy stuff, obviously, but interesting for the way he shifts them from anarchist anti-heroes to upright chaps to satisfy an audience who - er - first took to them as villains...
The main thing about it is that it was written in 1905 and in terms of style is a massive jump from victorian and edwardian crime fiction - it is a bit dated, but not as much as many books from 25/30 years later. Truly the beginning of the modern crime novel as we know it.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 3, 2011 18:43:26 GMT
Five collections of this calibre and, in the UK at least, £15 will secure you the lot! The Simon Iff Stories is a real coup on Wordsworth's part. To the best of my knowledge this will be the first time they've been collected. I've been meaning to find a spare lifetime to make a start on Crowley's The Drug & Other Stories. The half dozen or so Michel Parry and Peter Haining resurrected in their anthologies are fun - you might feel an urge to smear yourself in fungicidal wash after reading the likes of The Vixen and, in particular, the hilariously revolting/ genuinely frightening The Testament of Magdalen Blair - but 600+ pages of his satanic beastliness is one daunting prospect! Will be interesting to see how Wordsworth tackle the Benson book: a best of, a straight omnibus of the famous four volumes issued during his lifetime, or an attempt at collecting every ghost & horror story he ever wrote?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 3, 2011 19:08:46 GMT
Will be interesting to see how Wordsworth tackle the Benson book: a best of, a straight omnibus of the famous four volumes issued during his lifetime, or an attempt at collecting every ghost & horror story he ever wrote? My guess is: If somebody else has done it already, then the last alternative, but not if it has not been done before. (And right now I could not tell you if such a collection already exists.)
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Post by noose on Nov 3, 2011 19:24:23 GMT
I think THE COLLECTED GHOST STORIES OF E.F. BENSON is as close to a complete collection there's been so far.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Nov 3, 2011 19:36:13 GMT
I think THE COLLECTED GHOST STORIES OF E.F. BENSON is as close to a complete collection there's been so far. That is what I thought.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 3, 2011 20:20:01 GMT
that's the one Richard Dalby edited, the four volumes plus Benson's essay on The Clonmel Witch Burning? if that's the case, The Collected Ghost Stories is rather an extravagant claim to make. Jack Adrian exhumed another fifteen for The Flint Knife & Others in the, sadly, short-lived Equation Chiller series, and i'm almost certain he's since published further forgotten EFB ghost stories. i think The Flint Knife may even have appeared before Dalby's book, and Hugh Lamb had already featured The Chippendale Mirror (basis for the Googie Withers story in Dead Of Night), among others, in his anthologies. I guess Robinson's felt the book was already big enough, without trying to squeeze in more!
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Post by noose on Nov 3, 2011 20:34:46 GMT
The only thing I don't like about Wordsworth is that they've jumped on the coat tails of Ash Tree Press - and I think Tartarus - without whose research, in all honesty, Wordsworth wouldn't have published the books in question and what's more they don't credit their sources. It's a real shame, but it's not going to bother anyone who pays a couple of quid for some good books and it is in a way one up on those who do small press books and charge £30+ for them - which is quite frankly stupid. Richard Dalby and I are going to be doing a best of the CREEPS series - (£20 for a lovely hardback, of course) and I'll put my hand on my heart here - a lot of time, effort and money is going into it. I'd be really pissed off if a cheap version was published and we were not credited for the work! But then we would copyright the collection as a whole and could protect ourselves that way. Rant over, last I'll say on the subject!
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 3, 2011 21:03:58 GMT
Johnny, can you copyright an entire anthology like that? I had thought that if a story is public domain, then anyone can publish it.
Wordsworth did notoriously copy the Ash Tree R. Murray Gilchrist volume - all the stories in the same order! - but I'm not sure if there are any others. Some supernatural volumes are quite scarce in their original editions, like In Ghostly Company and The Shadow of the Blind, but that doesn't mean, necessarily, that Wordsworth used the Ash Tree editions. But who knows?
It's a bad look if the research that people like Jack Adrian, Mike Ashley, Richard Dalby, Barbara Roden have done to dig up uncollected stories is reused without acknowledgement.
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Post by noose on Nov 3, 2011 21:16:30 GMT
As to the one Richard and I are doing? Even though on the main the stories we reprint will be o.o.c. I believe I can copyright the selection and the order the tales we decide to run in the anthology.
I might be wrong, but I don't think so...
I thought Wordsworth had filched more than one - apols if I got it wrong!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Nov 4, 2011 4:08:14 GMT
I think THE COLLECTED GHOST STORIES OF E.F. BENSON is as close to a complete collection there's been so far. That is what I thought. I have the five volume Ash-Tree set, which I would hope is pretty exhaustive!
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Post by pulphack on Nov 4, 2011 8:31:17 GMT
johnny - an anthologist can copyright his selection and introduction/notes. this stands for material that is in copyright as long as more than uk rights for the actual stories have been obtained, and also for those selections using out of copyright material.
there is nothing to stop anyone else using those ooc stories, but to use any of your linking materials is a no-no, and indeed to use them in the same order is also strictly speaking a dubious grey area.
it is plagarism morally, but legally it is and also isn't if the material is out of copyright. it requires argument of whether or not the plagarist seeks to coat-tail on your original project. the problem here being that most anthologies of such type are low budget in production and return, relatively;and because there's not much cash gone in, the legal fees are a bit prohibitive to chase this up.
certainly, Peter Haining used to sell overseas rights to his anthos of old and new material and make a nice bit of income from it.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Nov 4, 2011 10:33:25 GMT
As the 1930s seemed to mark the end of a golden age for British horror stories, a collection from the CREEPS series is something I've been wanting to see for years. Until I saw the Creeps: A-Z by Author thread I didn't realize that Richard Dalby's The Sorceress In Stained Glass had used six of the stories. It is one of my favourite anthologies and I look forward to seeing more of the same.
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asenath
Crab On The Rampage
The Thing on the Doorstep
Posts: 32
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Post by asenath on Feb 28, 2012 23:13:50 GMT
Very excited about the Henry S. Whitehead collection! His writings were always hard to come by in the States-- at least they were back in the 80's. I'll be first in line for this volume from Wordsworth.
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