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Post by jamesdoig on Jul 4, 2021 0:55:40 GMT
Chris Mikul has kindly sent through the latest issue of his Bizarrism, with fascinating articles on obscure eccentrics, fanatics and fads. This issue has an update on Somerton Man (recently exhumed for DNA testing), Jane Dolinger (writer, explorer and jungle goddess), a history of embalmed dictators, the story of C.J. De Garis, Harry Price, Connie Converse, and book reviews.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 4, 2021 15:45:13 GMT
Market not entirely washed out by this mornings downpour; found this pair for £1. Some of us have been known to moan that certain 'Tales of the Weird' anthologies recycle too many old chestnuts we all have tens of times over, and Tanya Kirk's Christmas effort is definitely guilty on that score, with just one sadistic exception. E. F. Benson's Boxing Night from The Tatler for 30 Nov. 1923. Ms Kirk's introduction to the story concludes: "He never married and critics have often inferred from his writings that he was something of a misogynist." Call for Action includes The Demon Barber, the exploits of Sweeney Todd (minus Mrs. Lovett). "As the stage-machinery in this old melodrama rewritten is rather complicated, and might be more effective in terms of sound condensed into a ten page, the play is designed mainly for reading aloud or recording." Spirits of the Season cover: Mauricio Villamayor Tanya Kirk [ed.] - Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings (British Library, 2018) Tanya Kirk - Introduction
Amelia B. Edwards - The Four-Fifteen Express F. Anstey – The Curse Of The Catafalques Frank Cowper - Christmas Eve On A Haunted Hulk Frank R. Stockton - The Christmas Shadrach B. M. Croker - Number Ninety E. Nesbit - The Shadow Algernon Blackwood - The Kit-Bag M. R. James - The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance E. F. Benson - Boxing Night Marjorie Bowen - The Prescription Hugh Walpole - The Snow A. M. Burrage - Smee J. B. Priestley - The Demon King H. Russell Wakefield - Lucky's GroveBlurb: Festive cheer turns to maddening fear in this new collection of seasonal hauntings, which include the best Christmas ghost stories from the 1860s to the 1940s. The traditional trappings of the holiday are turned upside down as restless spirits disrupt the merry games of the living, Christmas trees teem with spiteful pagan presences, and the Devil himself treads the boards at the village pantomime. As the cold night of winter closes in and the glow of the hearth begins to flicker and fade, the uninvited visitors gather in the dark in this distinctive assortment of Yuletide Chillers. Paul Groves & Nigel Grimshaw [ed.] - Call to Action (Edward Arnold, 1979) The Make-up Man It'll Save a Few p Cinderella Alice Traitor What a Lovely Cow you Are! The Demon BarberBlurb: This is a collection of seven original plays to read or record primarily written for students in the lower forms of secondary school. These plays provide an excellent opportunity for group reading practice and also stimulate the students’ own sense of theatre through suggestions for ‘Making Your Own Plays’ and ‘Plots for You to Try’. The contents represent many different types of theatre: situation comedy, melodrama, pantomime, thriller and adventure story.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jul 10, 2021 23:41:31 GMT
Couple of finds from the junk shop for a buck each: Part of the Discovering... series, this one published in 1972 - headless horses and rider: And one for the back of the Vault, published in 1971. Ricki Francis was the pseudonym of carlene Francis who wrote about 50 adult novels for Horwitz/Scripts. Another reminder that anything goes in the 1970s.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jul 10, 2021 23:48:56 GMT
Chris Mikul has kindly sent through the latest issue of his Bizarrism, with fascinating articles on obscure eccentrics, fanatics and fads. This issue has an update on Somerton Man (recently exhumed for DNA testing), Jane Dolinger (writer, explorer and jungle goddess), a history of embalmed dictators, the story of C.J. De Garis, Harry Price, Connie Converse, and book reviews. Connie Converse jumped into her car one day and left home to start a new life - she was never seen again. These days she has some cachet for a few folk songs she recorded in the 60s:
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Post by dem bones on Jul 11, 2021 10:32:31 GMT
Not much doing at this morning's market, though found these in 2 for £1 tray. The Boat was purely a book rescue - visions of it going to the grinder - but having read the blurb, it looks well worth reading. The Nashe is a slimline (60 page) booklet. Author mocks credulity of those who believe in ghosts, hobgoblins, fairies, dreams, mumbo jumbo ... Walter Gibson - The Boat (W. H. Allen, 1952) Blurb: HERE, for the first time, is told the full story of what must be one of the most terrifying episodes in the annals of the sea and, at the same time, one of the most astonishing instances of human endurance.
Shortly after the fall of Singapore a Dutch ship, the Rooseboom, sailed from Padang with 500 evacuees, mostly British civilians and soldiers. She was torpedoed in the dead of night on the way to Ceylon, and sank within a few minutes.
Only one lifeboat floated and into it crowded 135 human beings packed so tightly that they could only stand up. They were adrift in mid-ocean, with but a few handfuls of food and a few mouthfuls of water and they were almost naked.
For twenty-eight days the tiny boat drifted helplessly for nearly 1,000 miles, until it grounded on the shores of an island off Sumatra. Of the 135 souls on board at the start, only four had survived : two mad Javanese, a Chinese girl and one white man — Walter Gibson of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
Within the covers of this book, the hardy Scot whose life was so miraculously saved, recounts the story of what happened in The Boat during its macabre voyage across the Indian Ocean.
It is a story of heroism, horror, tragedy, murder and treachery the like of which could not be found outside the realms of imaginative fiction. Men became criminals and cannibals in the battle for survival.
Walter Gibson has set down the moving and harrowing story in simple, unpretentious words, making no attempt to embellish the stark realism of events.
Here is a human document that depicts the heights of heroism and the depths of degradation which people can touch when they are face to face with the prospect of a lingering, but inevitable, doom.
Of all the “escape” books that have thrilled the public recently few can equal the high drama of The BoatThomas Nashe - The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (Penguin, 2015; originally 1594). Blurb: Demonic horrors and spirits dreamt up by the most exuberant, inventive prose writers of Elizabethan England
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 11, 2021 15:43:12 GMT
Not much doing at this morning's market, though found these in 2 for £1 tray. The Boat was purely a book rescue - visions of it going to the grinder - but having read the blurb, it looks well worth reading. The Nashe is a slimline (60 page) booklet. Author mocks credulity of those who believe in ghosts, hobgoblins, fairies, dreams, mumbo jumbo ... Walter Gibson - The Boat (W. H. Allen, 1952) Blurb: HERE, for the first time, is told the full story of what must be one of the most terrifying episodes in the annals of the sea and, at the same time, one of the most astonishing instances of human endurance.
Shortly after the fall of Singapore a Dutch ship, the Rooseboom, sailed from Padang with 500 evacuees, mostly British civilians and soldiers. She was torpedoed in the dead of night on the way to Ceylon, and sank within a few minutes.
Only one lifeboat floated and into it crowded 135 human beings packed so tightly that they could only stand up. They were adrift in mid-ocean, with but a few handfuls of food and a few mouthfuls of water and they were almost naked.
For twenty-eight days the tiny boat drifted helplessly for nearly 1,000 miles, until it grounded on the shores of an island off Sumatra. Of the 135 souls on board at the start, only four had survived : two mad Javanese, a Chinese girl and one white man — Walter Gibson of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
Within the covers of this book, the hardy Scot whose life was so miraculously saved, recounts the story of what happened in The Boat during its macabre voyage across the Indian Ocean.
It is a story of heroism, horror, tragedy, murder and treachery the like of which could not be found outside the realms of imaginative fiction. Men became criminals and cannibals in the battle for survival.
Walter Gibson has set down the moving and harrowing story in simple, unpretentious words, making no attempt to embellish the stark realism of events.
Here is a human document that depicts the heights of heroism and the depths of degradation which people can touch when they are face to face with the prospect of a lingering, but inevitable, doom.
Of all the “escape” books that have thrilled the public recently few can equal the high drama of The BoatThomas Nashe - The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (Penguin, 2015; originally 1594). Blurb: Demonic horrors and spirits dreamt up by the most exuberant, inventive prose writers of Elizabethan EnglandHas Thomas Nashe's Elizabethan English been modernised? I know a little about him. He was always getting in trouble, he co-wrote a lost scandalous play called The Isle of Dogs with Ben Jonson. Jonson was jailed for it, but Nashe went on the run from London until things calmed down. He also wrote about smoked herring. He is one of the great prose writers of the Elizabethan age.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 11, 2021 23:51:57 GMT
Thomas Nashe - The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions (Penguin, 2015; originally 1594).
Blurb: Demonic horrors and spirits dreamt up by the most exuberant, inventive prose writers of Elizabethan England Has Thomas Nashe's Elizabethan English been modernised? I know a little about him. He was always getting in trouble, he co-wrote a lost scandalous play called The Isle of Dogs with Ben Jonson. Jonson was jailed for it, but Nashe went on the run from London until things calmed down. He also wrote about smoked herring. He is one of the great prose writers of the Elizabethan age. Nashe claimed that the art of smoking herring was accidentally discovered by a man in Great Yarmouth, I think. Like most Elizabethan playwrights he must have collaborated a lot when he wrote for the stage, so it's hard to know exactly what came from his quill. This is very common for the age, and even some plays that we commonly think are only by Shakespeare probably had other collaborators too, like Macbeth for instance. There is an eyewitness account of the play by a contemporary, and Hecate isn't mentioned. It was probably added later by Middleton another major playwright. helrunar the contemporary is Simon Forman, who was an astrologer. I looked him up as I'd forgotten his name. www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/simonforman.html
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Post by jamesdoig on Jul 26, 2021 10:17:29 GMT
Went to Canty's in Fyshwick today which must be the best 2nd hand bookshop in Canberra for both range and price. Picked these up for $3.50 each: Haven't seen this before - seems to be a paperback original: This one was published by Horwitz and looks the same as the US original:
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Post by andydecker on Jul 26, 2021 10:47:39 GMT
Again, nice finds.
But Contents for Sale must be one of the blandest title of a horror novel.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 1, 2021 13:43:25 GMT
Retrieved from this morning's market. The Underwood contains a slip from the publisher, "Harrap Books have pleasure in sending for review ..." The recipient evidently passed on the opportunity as, but for some wear to dust jacket, the book is as untouched. M. R. James - Collected Ghost Stories: Edited with an introduction and notes by Darryl Jones (Oxford University Press 2011) Darryl Jones - Introduction Notes on the Text Selected Bibliography A Chronology of M. R. James
THE GHOST STORIES
Canon Alberic's Scrapbook Lost Hearts The Mezzotint The Ash-Tree Number 13 Count Magnus 'Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad' The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas A School Story The Rose Garden The Tractate Middoth Casting the Runes The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral Martin's Close Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance The Residence At Whitminster The Diary Of Mr. Poynter An Episode In Cathedral History The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance Two Doctors The Haunted Dolls House The Uncommon Prayer Book A Neighbour's Landmark A View From A Hill A Warning To The Curious An Evening's Entertainment There Was A Man Dwelt By a Churchyard Rats After Dark In The Playing Fields Wailing Well The Experiment The Malice of Inanimate Objects A Vignette
Appendix: M. R. James on Ghost Stories Explanatory NotesBlurb; Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M. R. James is an unlikely producer of ghost stories. An eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge, his classic supernatural tales have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb. They draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. Stories that were first read aloud in James's study late on Christmas Eve have the power to haunt us still.
This book presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and 'Casting the Runes,' and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story.
Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own. Peter Underwood - Queen Victoria's Other World (Harrap, 1986) Preface Acknowledgments
Queen Victoria's Mother A Powerful Influence Itineraries and Intrigues – Early Interests and Difficulties Prince Albert – An Influence in Life and Death Bertie and Alix - The Blamed and the Beautiful Disraeli and Gladstone – The Loved and the Unloved Robert James Lees – Medium and Mentor John Brown - An Enigmatic Influence Ghosts and Haunted Houses – A Continual Interest The Queen's Friends and Acquaintances and Their Interests Queen Victoria - Her Idiosyncrasies and Approach to Omens and Superstitions Death - The Lifelong Obsession The Royal Family's Interest in the Paranormal Queen Victoria, the Enigmatic – Has She Returned and What Was She Really Like?
Select Bibliography IndexBlurb: There have been many books about Queen Victoria but there has never been one that has explored her 'other world' – the world of the strange and unusual, the world of death and her fascination for it, and the world of the unseen and the paranormal that she could never resist. During his research Peter Underwood gained the distinct impression that there was something of a conspiracy of silence around her interest in the paranormal. However, there is overwhelming evidence that as a fatherless and bewildered princess, as a quickly matured queen, and then as a widowed and often lonely woman, Victoria showed a considerable interest in death and its draperies.
This book covers Victoria's youthful encounters with the occult; her visits to haunted properties, her friends and acquaintances with similar interests and experiences; her alleged involvement with Robert Lees, the medium; her undoubted interest in the Jack-the-Ripper murders; her obsession with omens and superstitions and her fascination with death. Not long before his death the Prince Consort told the Queen, 'We don't know in what state we shall meet again, but that we shall recognize each other and be together in eternity I am perfectly certain'. Through forty years of widowhood Queen Victoria believed utterly that this would be so.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 1, 2021 14:12:28 GMT
Dem, you always find such fab gleanings. That book about old Vicki sounds like a regular riot.
cheers, Hel
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 14, 2021 23:35:11 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Aug 15, 2021 0:48:29 GMT
Beautiful finds as always, James--thanks for the scans!
I'm curious about the Basil Copper novel, having only read a couple of his short stories. I seem to recall somebody more or less commenting "much of a muchness" about the novels... guess I will look for a blog review.
cheers, Hel
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Post by dem bones on Aug 15, 2021 10:04:47 GMT
A 'meh' morning at the market, just this pair for 50p each. The Wordsworth The Beetle: A Mystery is 2007, Pan's The Rats, gold lettering on black, is a "SPECIAL 40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE CLASSIC, BESTSELLING NOVEL THAT LAUNCHED JAMES HERBERT'S CAREER .... WITH A FOREWORD BY NEIL GAIMAN." None of my other books - not even Mark Sonders' Blight - will speak to it.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 15, 2021 10:29:54 GMT
The Wordsworth The Beetle: A MysteryIt is the rare upside-down version! You are rich now.
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