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Post by johnnymains on Apr 24, 2022 17:28:40 GMT
Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology - ed. Johnny Mains (due October 2022)
 Blurb:
"Would you believe me, people? From the day the Dearg-daol laid eyes on the little girl, she began dwindling and dwindling, like a fire that wouldn’t be mended...After a quarter she was only a shadow. After another month she was in the churchyard." 'The Dearg-Daol' - Pádraic H. Pearse
From the shorelines, hills and crags of ancient lands, tales of twisted creatures, sins against nature and pagan revenants have been passed down from generation to generation. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, folklore from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man inspired a new strain of strange short stories, running alongside the Celtic Revival movement of art, craft and poetry.
In this new volume, Johnny Mains dives into the archives of the forgotten to unearth an array of uneasy stories with Celtic folklore at their heart – tales which resonate with our fascination for the traditions and fears of the people that came before.
Really pleased to be part of this hardback release later on this year. The British Library for me is the very pinnacle and I hope to add to the very rich body of work that has gone before. Have found some unreprinted stuff from the Isle of Man that will blow your minds.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 24, 2022 19:00:13 GMT
This sounds really fabulous, Mr Mains! I am intrigued!
H.
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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 26, 2022 10:34:04 GMT
Really pleased to be part of this hardback release later on this year. The British Library for me is the very pinnacle and I hope to add to the very rich body of work that has gone before. Have found some unreprinted stuff from the Isle of Man that will blow your minds. That's a great achievement, Johnny! Looking forwards to having my mind blown. |
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Post by johnnymains on Apr 26, 2022 11:42:22 GMT
Thanks Hel and James - I'm still on cloud 9.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 26, 2022 12:12:59 GMT
After The Night Wire, the next 4 in the BL Tales of the Weird series will be:
31. Our Haunted Shores: Tales From The Coasts Of The British Isles (June 2022)
32. The Horned God: Weird Tales Of The Great God Pan (Aug 2022)
33. Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales Of Acoustic Weird (Sept 2022)
34. Haunters At The Hearth: Eerie Tales For Christmas Nights (Oct 2022)
35. Polar Horrors: Chilling Tales From The Ends Of The Earth (Nov 2022)
Covers and blurbs (though not complete contents, obviously) are on Am*z*n UK. I suspect we will have covered a fair bit of the contents of The Horned God on here (I am sure there is a thread on this topic somewhere, but can't find it). Spectral Sounds and Polar Horrors sound promising.
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Post by johnnymains on Apr 26, 2022 12:21:09 GMT
Here's the *m*z*n link if anyone wants to pre-order Celtic Weird.
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Post by Middoth on Apr 26, 2022 18:36:31 GMT
After The Night Wire, the next 4 in the BL Tales of the Weird series will be: The British Library has more and more interesting topics every time. |
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Post by Dr Strange on May 26, 2022 12:32:27 GMT
Here's another one, due for release in April and already listed for pre-order on Am*z*n (along with the other 3 above) - The Night Wire & Other Tales Of Weird Media - ed. Aaron Worth.  Blurb - A mysterious radio signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly location. Photography and X-ray evidence suggests there may be some truth to a sculptor’s claim that he has created a god. A spectral projection sows terror amid the flickering light of the cinema. From the whispering wires of the telegraph and ghostly images of the daguerreotype to the disembodied voices of the phonograph and radio, the new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave their users miraculous new powers – and new nightmares. After all, if Graham Bell’s magical device could connect us with loved ones a half a world away, what was to stop it from reaching out and touching the dead – or something worse? Tracing this fiction of fear from the 1890s to the 1950s, this new collection brings together the best tales of haunted or uncanny media from classic – and unjustly neglected – writers of the supernatural. This is due for release in a few days. Humgoo, have your mystical sources revealed the table of contents yet? Still no TOC, but I have seen an updated blurb - A mysterious news signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly location. X-ray evidence suggests the impossible truth that a sculptor is becoming one with his creation. A gramophone channels the venomous words of a churlish spirit and its cruel vengeance. The ground-breaking new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries delivered their users into a world of unfathomable miracles and fresh nightmares - a world in which pioneers of weird fiction gave expression to the anxieties at the heart of seemingly limitless communication and the capturing of images beyond the human eye. Tracing this fiction of speculation and fear from the motion photography of the 1890s to 1950s television, this new collection presents seventeen tales of haunted and uncanny media from a range of writers inspired by its ghastly potential, including Marjorie Bowen, H. Russell Wakefield, Mary Treadgold and J. B. Priestley.I reckon the gramophone story is Marjorie Bowen's They Found My Grave, the Wakefield is Ghost Hunt, the Treadgold is The Telephone, and the Priestley is Uncle Phil on TV. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 26, 2022 15:54:19 GMT
Still no TOC, but I have seen an updated blurb - A mysterious news signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly location. X-ray evidence suggests the impossible truth that a sculptor is becoming one with his creation. A gramophone channels the venomous words of a churlish spirit and its cruel vengeance. The ground-breaking new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries delivered their users into a world of unfathomable miracles and fresh nightmares - a world in which pioneers of weird fiction gave expression to the anxieties at the heart of seemingly limitless communication and the capturing of images beyond the human eye. Tracing this fiction of speculation and fear from the motion photography of the 1890s to 1950s television, this new collection presents seventeen tales of haunted and uncanny media from a range of writers inspired by its ghastly potential, including Marjorie Bowen, H. Russell Wakefield, Mary Treadgold and J. B. Priestley.I reckon the gramophone story is Marjorie Bowen's They Found My Grave, the Wakefield is Ghost Hunt, the Treadgold is The Telephone, and the Priestley is Uncle Phil on TV. I haven't read the Bowen story or the Treadgold story, so that's good news for me. |
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Post by Dr Strange on May 26, 2022 18:03:18 GMT
Bowen's "They Found My Grave" was first published under the pseudonym Joseph Shearing in the collection Orange Blossoms (1938). It seems to have been reprinted as by Shearing in a few places (e.g. in Otto Penzler's The Big Book of Ghost Stories, 2012).
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Post by johnnymains on Jun 4, 2022 10:22:29 GMT
This is due for release in a few days. Humgoo, have your mystical sources revealed the table of contents yet? Still no TOC, but I have seen an updated blurb - A mysterious news signal reports cosmic doom from an otherworldly location. X-ray evidence suggests the impossible truth that a sculptor is becoming one with his creation. A gramophone channels the venomous words of a churlish spirit and its cruel vengeance. The ground-breaking new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries delivered their users into a world of unfathomable miracles and fresh nightmares - a world in which pioneers of weird fiction gave expression to the anxieties at the heart of seemingly limitless communication and the capturing of images beyond the human eye. Tracing this fiction of speculation and fear from the motion photography of the 1890s to 1950s television, this new collection presents seventeen tales of haunted and uncanny media from a range of writers inspired by its ghastly potential, including Marjorie Bowen, H. Russell Wakefield, Mary Treadgold and J. B. Priestley.I reckon the gramophone story is Marjorie Bowen's They Found My Grave, the Wakefield is Ghost Hunt, the Treadgold is The Telephone, and the Priestley is Uncle Phil on TV. Three out of four aint bad Dr Strange...
The contents are as follows:
The Eidoloscope - Robert Duncan Milne
The Talking Machine - Marcel Schwob
Rontgen's Curse - Charles Crosthwaite
The Devil's Fantasia - Bernard Capes
"Wireless" - Rudyard Kipling
Poor Lucy Rivers - Bernard Capes
Benlian - Oliver Onions
Unseen-Unfeared - Francis Stephens Signals - Stefan Grabinski
The Statement of Rudolph Carter - H.P. Lovecraft
The Wind in the Woods - Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
The Night Wire - H.F. Arnold
Surprise Item - H. Russel Wakefield
The Haunted Cinema - Louis Golding
They Found My Grave - Marjorie Bowen
Uncle Phil on TV - J.B. Priestley
The Telephone - Mary Treadgold
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 4, 2022 17:21:41 GMT
Three out of four aint bad Dr Strange... The contents are as follows: The Eidoloscope - Robert Duncan Milne
The Talking Machine - Marcel Schwob
Rontgen's Curse - Charles Crosthwaite
The Devil's Fantasia - Bernard Capes
"Wireless" - Rudyard Kipling
Poor Lucy Rivers - Bernard Capes
Benlian - Oliver Onions
Unseen-Unfeared - Francis Stephens
Signals - Stefan Grabinski
The Statement of Rudolph Carter - H.P. Lovecraft
The Wind in the Woods - Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
The Night Wire - H.F. Arnold
Surprise Item - H. Russel Wakefield
The Haunted Cinema - Louis Golding
They Found My Grave - Marjorie Bowen
Uncle Phil on TV - J.B. Priestley
The Telephone - Mary Treadgold
Cool - plenty there that I don't recognize. In fact, there are some names that ring no bells whatsoever with me (Milne, Schwob, Crosthwaite, Kyffin-Taylor). |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jun 4, 2022 19:50:44 GMT
Three out of four aint bad Dr Strange... The contents are as follows: The Eidoloscope - Robert Duncan Milne
The Talking Machine - Marcel Schwob
Rontgen's Curse - Charles Crosthwaite
The Devil's Fantasia - Bernard Capes
"Wireless" - Rudyard Kipling
Poor Lucy Rivers - Bernard Capes
Benlian - Oliver Onions
Unseen-Unfeared - Francis Stephens
Signals - Stefan Grabinski
The Statement of Rudolph Carter - H.P. Lovecraft
The Wind in the Woods - Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
The Night Wire - H.F. Arnold
Surprise Item - H. Russel Wakefield
The Haunted Cinema - Louis Golding
They Found My Grave - Marjorie Bowen
Uncle Phil on TV - J.B. Priestley
The Telephone - Mary Treadgold
Cool - plenty there that I don't recognize. In fact, there are some names that ring no bells whatsoever with me (Milne, Schwob, Crosthwaite, Kyffin-Taylor). Those last three names sound made-up. |
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 4, 2022 21:12:36 GMT
Robert Duncan Milne sounds interesting - born in Cupar, Fife in 1844, he emigrated to the US sometime in the 1860s. After doing various other jobs (shepherd, cook, labourer), he started having scientific articles and short stories published regularly in the San Francisco Argonaut. I've seen it claimed that he was an influence on Ambrose Bierce (sometime editor of The Argonaut) and a close friend of R.L. Stevenson (apparently helping him sell stories when he washed up penniless in San Francisco), and he is described as being "the lost father of science fiction" and "the world's first full-time SF writer". Unfortunately he was also an alcoholic, and died after drunkenly stumbling out in front of one of San Francisco's first trolley cars on Dec 15th 1899. He published about 60 science fiction stories in all, some of which were collected together for the first and only time in 1980 by Sam Moskowitz as Into The Sun & Other Stories. theconversation.com/remembering-the-lost-father-of-american-science-fiction-and-his-scottish-roots-78968 |
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 4, 2022 22:27:59 GMT
In fact, there are some names that ring no bells whatsoever with me (Milne, Schwob, Crosthwaite, Kyffin-Taylor). Those last three names sound made-up. Schwob (1867-1905) was a French decadent/symbolist writer. According to w*k*p*d*a, "He was extremely well known and respected during his life and notably befriended a great number of intellectuals and artists of the time" - including the likes of Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, R.L. Stevenson, and Aleister Crowley. Crosthwaite is Sir Charles Haukes Todd Crosthwaite KCSI (1835-1915), who was Chief Commissioner of Burma from March 1887 to December 1890. This seems to be the only fiction he ever had published, and you can read it here - www.flyingcarsandfoodpills.com/roentgens-curseBessie Kyffin-Taylor (1880-1922) has one collection of stories to her name ( From Out of the Silence: Seven Strange Stories, 1920) and has been compared to E.F. Benson in style, e.g. - greydogtales.com/blog/out-of-the-silence-with-bessie-kyffin-taylor/ |
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