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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 24, 2022 11:40:16 GMT
Our Haunted Shores - eds. Emily Alder, Jimmy Packham & Joan Passey (June 2022, British Library Tales of the Weird #31)  Blurb: The sea that night sang rather than chanted; all along the far-running shore a rising tide dropped thick foam, and the waves, white-crested, came steadily in with the swing of a deliberate purpose.
From foreboding cliffs and lonely lighthouses to rumbling shingles and silted estuaries, the coasts of the British Isles have stoked the imaginations of storytellers for millennia, lending a rich literary significance to these spaces between land and sea. For those who choose to explore these shores, generations of ghosts, sea-spirits, fairies and tentacled monsters come and go with the tide.
This new collection of fifteen short stories, six folk tales and four poems ranging from 1789 to 1933 offers a chilling literary tour of the coasts of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man, including haunting pieces by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Bram Stoker and Charlotte Riddell.
Contents: Introduction Note from the publisher The Haunted Beach (poetry) - Mary Robinson Two Sonnets (poetry) - Charlotte Smith Narrative of a Fatal Event - Anon. The Strange Student - Anon. What Was It? - Anon. One Day at Arle - Frances Hodgson Burnett Two Folk Tales - James Bowker The Last of Squire Ennismore - Charlotte Riddell Legends - H.D. Lowry A Ghost of the Sea - Francis Prevost Crooken Sands - Bram Stoker The Sea Raiders - H.G. Wells The Sea Fit - Algernon Blackwood Where the Tides Ebb & Flow - Lord Dunsany Four Folk Tales - Sophia Morrison Out of the Earth - Arthur Machen A Tale of an Empty House - E.F. Benson On the Isle of Blue Men - Robert W. Sneddon Seashore Macabre: A Moment's Experience - Hugh Walpole A Coast Nightmare (poetry) - Christina Rossetti
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Post by Dr Strange on Jun 24, 2022 14:17:34 GMT
A bit of googling tells me that Charlotte Smith wrote a sonnet with the wonderful title "On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic", first published in 1797.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jun 24, 2022 15:16:28 GMT
A bit of googling tells me that Charlotte Smith wrote a sonnet with the wonderful title "On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic", first published in 1797. And here it is:  Dang. That was disappointing. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 25, 2022 21:37:21 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). Editor Aaron Worth did a good job finding unfamiliar stories. I'd only read three of these: Stephens's "Unseen - Unfeared" (a classic), Arnold's "The Night Wire" (a model of evocative and economical storytelling, with effective use of wire service lingo), and Lovecraft's "The Statement of Randolph Carter" (silly, but entertaining). Of the others, Milne's "The Eidoloscope" and Crosthwaite's "Rontgen's Curse" are standard but passable weird science stories (featuring a camera that can capture past events and x-ray vision eyedrops, respectively). I'm not a fan of Capes, Kipling, or Onions, and their entries here didn't change my mind; I preferred the short-short stories by Grabinski (telegraphs and trains, with some vivid details) and Wakeman (a stray radio signal) along with the longer one by Kyffin-Taylor (a Kodak camera). I liked Bowen's and Priestley's even better--the former is a cynical story featuring a phonograph and a seance; the latter is a darkly funny story involving a haunted television. |
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Post by johnnymains on Oct 7, 2022 16:04:23 GMT
Was allowed to reveal the contents, so here you go! And if you're wondering why Aickman, Wharton etc is in it - we decided it would be good to have an outsider's view also.
November, 2022
In this volume, Johnny Mains dives into the archives to unearth a hoard of twenty-one enthralling tales imbued with elements of Celtic folklore, ranging from the 1820s to the 1980s and including three weird lost gems translated from Gaelic.
CONTENTS:
SCOTLAND
The Milk-White Doo - Elizabeth W. Grierson
The Cure - Dorothy K. Haynes
The Fetch - Robert Aickman
IRELAND
The Death Spancel - Katharine Tynan
The Seeker of Souls - Rosalie Muspratt (as Jasper John) The Green Grave and the Black Grave - Mary Lavin
BRITTANY
The Other Side: A Breton Legend - Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock
Kerfol - Edith Wharton
Celui-là - Eleanor Scott
ISLE OF MAN
Outwitting the Devil - Bill Billy
The Black Dog of Colby Glen - Billy Pheric
The Tarroo-Ushtey - Nigel Kneale
WALES
The Knight of the Blood-Red Plume - Anne of Swansea
The Gift of Tongues - Arthur Machen
Mermaid Beach - Leslie Varde
CORNWALL
All Souls' Night - A.L. Rowse
Shepherd, Show Me... - Rosalind Wade
The Green Steps - Frank Baker
GAELIC
MacPhie's Black Dog - Donald Cameron
The Butterfly's Wedding - Eachann MacPhaidein
The Loch at the Back of the World - Reverend Lauchlan MacLean Watt
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Post by jamesdoig on Oct 7, 2022 21:11:55 GMT
Between Celtic Weird and Things that Wait in the Dark I've got my spring reading sorted.
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Post by johnnymains on Oct 9, 2022 12:30:46 GMT
Ah, thanks - CW was a brilliant book to work on. Hoping to do a book of Gaelic short stories next - translation alongside the originals.
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Mirek
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 13 
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Post by Mirek on Oct 15, 2022 16:23:04 GMT
It is interesting that "Signals" by Stefan Grabinski is in the NIGHT WIRE collection. Not the original Polish, of course, but this translation. Since I am the translator and have the copyright rights of my own work, I am curious how this was done.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 15, 2022 17:33:39 GMT
It is interesting that "Signals" by Stefan Grabinski is in the NIGHT WIRE collection. Not the original Polish, of course, but this translation. Since I am the translator and have the copyright rights of my own work, I am curious how this was done. They do credit you. Maybe you should get in touch with them. |
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Post by andydecker on Oct 15, 2022 18:40:24 GMT
It is interesting that "Signals" by Stefan Grabinski is in the NIGHT WIRE collection. Not the original Polish, of course, but this translation. Since I am the translator and have the copyright rights of my own work, I am curious how this was done. It depends on your contract. Translation rights don't fall necessecarily automatically back to the translator when books become out of print. It depends of course on the fine print of the concerned country's copyright laws. |
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Mirek
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 13
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Post by Mirek on Oct 15, 2022 22:10:46 GMT
I have done a couple of things before I posted here, so I have the book in Kindle form. I have contacted the editor and received a reply. Now I await the British Library. And, as I wrote, this translation (not the original Polish) is in my name. I doubt that British laws on this are different to American laws. But we shall see! I am very patient.
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Mirek
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 13
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Post by Mirek on Oct 15, 2022 22:24:55 GMT
Also, from the book:
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be pleased to be notified of any corrections to be incorporated in reprints or future editions.
I am not that difficult to contact in this day of social media, etc., but no attempt was made to contact me that I know of.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 16, 2022 13:56:39 GMT
Also, from the book:
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be pleased to be notified of any corrections to be incorporated in reprints or future editions. I am not that difficult to contact in this day of social media, etc., but no attempt was made to contact me that I know of.
There may be some obscure rule that says a classified ad in The Times is enough. |
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Mirek
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 13
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Post by Mirek on Oct 17, 2022 12:06:43 GMT
True! It could be in code, too, like the old Sherlock Holmes stories.
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toff
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 78
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Post by toff on Oct 18, 2022 19:52:28 GMT
Celtic Weird does sound very interesting. I like that Brittany was included. Does Halloween feature, I wonder, or will that be the subject of a future BL volume? (A couple years ago I'd tried looking to see if there were any Thanksgiving ghost stories or poems. Turned out there were at least some, while Thanksgiving horror movies remain pretty rare.)
The Night Wire: and Other Tales of Weird Media also sounds good. Any haunted microfilm readers?
BL has gone so specific with some of their subjects - what might become too narrow to be viable? Are there enough good stories set in the Channel Islands or Shetland Islands for a volume? Gibraltar? Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha? Rather than just stories about sounds and acoustics, an actual songbook of horror sheet music?
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