Philippa Pearce - Dread and Delight

[humgoo]

Apr 27, 2018 21:10:52 GMT jamesdoig said:

Was in Queanbeyan yesterday lunchtime and had a quick scout of the charity shops:

Nice collection for $3. Acknowledgements include "Richard Dalby, Rosemary Pardoe, and Barbara Roden, all of the Ghost Story Society."

Apr 28, 2018 22:09:13 GMT jamesdoig said:

Here's the contents:

Philippa Pearce, Dread and Delight: A Century of Children's Ghost Stories (OUP, 1995)
Introduction
M.R. James, A School Story
A.C. Benson, Out of the Sea
H.F.W. Tatham, Manfred's Three Wishes
William J. Wintle, The Light in the Dormitory
Walter de la Mare, Miss Jemima
Arthur Machen, Johnny Double
Eleanor Farjeon, Elsie Piddock Skips in her Sleep
Lucy Boston, The Tiger-Skin Rug
William Pene Du Bois, Elisabeth the Cow Ghost
Robert Bright, Georgie
David Severn, All in the Night's Work
Christopher Woodforde, Richard
Alison Uttley, The Wee Ghostie
Robert Arthur, The Haunted Trailer
Sorche Nic Leodhas, The Hose that lacked a Bogle
Pamela Ropner, The January Queen
R Chetwynd-Hayes, Brownie
Michael Kenyon, The Ghost of Top Wood
Dorothy Edwards, The Old Whistle Ghost and the Old Grey Ganddad
Margaret Mahy, Looking for a Ghost
Philippa Pearce, At the River-Gates
Ruth Park, Somebody Lives in the Nobody House
J.S. Leatherbarrow, The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara
Joan Aiken, She was Afraid of Upstairs
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Extinguished Lights
Jan Mark, Who's a Pretty Boy Then?
Penelope Lively, Uninvited Ghosts
Farrukh Dhondy, The Bride
George Mackay Brown, Ivor
Vivien Alcock, Siren Song
Aiden Chambers, The Tower
Grace Hallworth, The Guitarist
Leon Garfied, A Grave Misunderstanding
Ruskin Bond, Ghost Trouble
Paul Yee, Spirits of the Railway
Barbara Griffiths, Many Happy Returns!
Robert Westall, The Beach
Susan Price, Across the Fields
Tim Wynne-Jones, The Clearing
John Gordon, The Burning Baby
Biographical Notes

It's a great selection with an excellent introduction and biographical notes - well worth finding a copy.

Apr 29, 2018 8:39:08 GMT ropardoe said:

I don't think I was aware of it either, despite the name check. It does indeed look like an impressive collection, including some stories it would be hard to find elsewhere, like Leatherbarrow's "The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara".

It has some Jamesian interest, as Ms Pearce examined the manuscript of "A School Story", and provides notes not found in Michael Cox's Oxford World's Classics edition:

The text of the story presents a puzzle: can M. R. James really have begun a ghost story for young boys with a smoking-room discussion of 'The Folklore of Private Schools'? And how unlike James to call the first of his reminiscing characters by a mere letter of the alphabet: A. Stranger still, perhaps, A.'s interlocutor has no name at all, although he tells the tale.

The MS of 'A School Story', as it went to the printer, can be inspected in the Modern Archive of King's College. The first two pages of the MS and the last page are of quite a different size from the rest, much smaller, and, although the handwriting on these smaller pages is the same as on the larger, the effect is different, perhaps a different pen, a different ink, or written in different circumstances—in haste, for instance.

At the beginning of the story, the change from the small pages to the large shows no problem, except that two lines at the top of the first large page roughly duplicate what is at the bottom of the preceding small page: these two top lines have been crossed out, to make the flow perfect. This suggests the possibility that the two small pages are some kind of rewrite which was spliced on to the main story in the large pages.

This supposition is strengthened when one reaches the change back from the last large page to the single small page at the very end of the story. Here there is a good deal of crossing out and writing in. A name, 'Mr Selby', is crossed out, and 'the narrator' is substituted. A little further on, another crossed-out passage gives another name which was not allowed to appear in the published text: 'In the course of that summer, Mr Jones paid a visit to a country house in Ireland.'

So, originally, there were a Mr Selby and a Mr Jones in what one may call the 'framing' of the story. Why did they disappear? And why does what seems to be a tête-à-tête conversation between A. and his anonymous friend at the beginning of 'A School Story' become, at the end, something rather different: 'There had been more than one listener to the story and ... one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland....'

Such confusion, inconsistency, and clumsiness may have more than one explanation. It strongly suggests, however, some kind of rewriting, in haste, at the beginning and—therefore—also at the end of 'A School Story'. Perhaps M. R. James realized (or had pointed out him), rather belatedly, that the 'framing' he had designed for an audience of young boys was not suitable for an adult readership. Hence the hurried rewriting, without matching paper.

If I am right in my supposition, the change from the new 'framing' to the original main narrative probably comes at about the sentence beginning 'It happened at my private school ...' (p. 2, l. 5).

—Philippa Pearce, Dread and Delight: A Century of Children's Ghost Stories, OUP, 1995, pp.325-6

[humgoo]

Apr 28, 2018 20:44:12 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

I wasn’t aware that this book existed. Now I’m intrigued.

RCH silliness alert! Can't say about most of the contemporary stories (are you familiar with them?), but stay away from the RCH story! I hope the other new(ish) stories are better (can't be worse in any case)!

[Michael Connolly]

May 1, 2021 13:49:19 GMT humgoo said:

Apr 28, 2018 20:44:12 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

I wasn’t aware that this book existed. Now I’m intrigued.

RCH silliness alert! Can't say about most of the contemporary stories (are you familiar with them?), but stay away from the RCH story! I hope the other new(ish) stories are better (can't be worse in any case)!

I think most of the stories in this are poor. Anyhow, the paperback copy I found of it is inscribed and autographed by Phillipa Pearce (or a forger).

[humgoo]

Lucy Boston - The Tiger-Skin Rug: A posthumous tale first saw the light of day in this volume. Ms Pearce notes that it's originally called "An Asylum Story" by Ms Boston, but Ms Pearce chose to retitle it for her antho. As you may have guessed from the new title, there's a haunted fabric (interestingly, Ms Boston seems also to be known for her patchwork) and a were-tiger involved.

"The natives would not have anything to do with it because one of their tribesmen had 'gone tiger' the week before and they felt superstitious about it. Gone tiger? Oh, yes! Oh yes! quite common. When a native is turned out of the tribe for some misdeed, or goes mad, or something of that kind, he goes off into the jungle and they say comes back as a tiger to revenge himself".

And don't worry, this one is not humorous! (If you want FUN there's always Robert Arthur's "The Haunted Trailer", a trailer haunted by a tramp ghost how appropriate hahaha etc). It has a tragic ending and the original title suggests the supernatural may or may not have only ever happened in the narrator's head.

Robert Lloyd Parry of Nunkie Films has performed this story as well as "Curfew" (just search you-know-where).

[helrunar]

Cheong, many thanks for providing those fascinating notes about the MS of "A School Story," as recorded by Ms Pearce. Intriguing to get a glimpse of the process by which the story made its way into print.

Also, lovely annotation of Mrs Boston's story. I've been collecting some of her less well-known works and will have to look for this volume. The surname Leatherbarrow certainly strikes a note of mystery. Sounds like the antagonist of one of those interminable internet TV miniseries in which people's lips get ripped-off in slo-mo.

And further, I'm now morbidly curious to read that RCH yarn. I mean, just how awful could it be?? (Ed. note: REALLY REALLY AWFUL)

cheers, Steve

[humgoo]

J. S. Leatherbarrow - The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara: Professor Morton, "a bachelor with strange religious beliefs which forbade him celebrating such occasions as Christmas and Easter", decided to spend the Christmas holiday burying himself in geological tomes quietly in a farm house in the Lake District. On the night of Christmas Eve, Morton, miffed by the festive row caused by his host's family, couldn't concentrate on The Borrowdale Series of Volcanic Eruptions and settled for a book selected from the shelf at random: Strange Tales from the Lake Country. To his own surprise, the professor was fascinated. The second story in it concerns a purported village witch in the 18th century:

"In a cottage high up on Glaramara lived an old woman whom all the valley said was a witch, who poisoned their sheep, addled their eggs and caused their new-born children to be born with hare lips. The old woman came down to the village once a week to buy her provisions, but no one ever spoke to her nor had the least idea where she got her money. Her only friend was an ancient goat which trotted behind her on these expeditions and carried some of her parcels in its mouth.

The expression on the goat's face was what frightened the people most. Some called it a devilish leer, some said they heard it laugh and that its laugh was like that of a malevolent child. A little bell hung round its neck and people could hear it ringing as the old woman went up and down the mountain and around the village."

Inevitably, the village parson was asked to intervene and failed miserably. The woman was burned anyway, as "Borrowdale saw one of the last witch burnings of history" ... Shivering, the professor closed the book at this point and tried to sleep. He couldn't, what with the woman beckoning him with her goat beside her just outside ...

[Michael Connolly]

May 1, 2021 13:40:06 GMT humgoo said:

Apr 27, 2018 21:10:52 GMT jamesdoig said:

Was in Queanbeyan yesterday lunchtime and had a quick scout of the charity shops:

Nice collection for $3. Acknowledgements include "Richard Dalby, Rosemary Pardoe, and Barbara Roden, all of the Ghost Story Society."

Apr 28, 2018 22:09:13 GMT jamesdoig said:

Here's the contents:

Philippa Pearce, Dread and Delight: A Century of Children's Ghost Stories (OUP, 1995)
Introduction
M.R. James, A School Story
A.C. Benson, Out of the Sea
H.F.W. Tatham, Manfred's Three Wishes
William J. Wintle, The Light in the Dormitory
Walter de la Mare, Miss Jemima
Arthur Machen, Johnny Double
Eleanor Farjeon, Elsie Piddock Skips in her Sleep
Lucy Boston, The Tiger-Skin Rug
William Pene Du Bois, Elisabeth the Cow Ghost
Robert Bright, Georgie
David Severn, All in the Night's Work
Christopher Woodforde, Richard
Alison Uttley, The Wee Ghostie
Robert Arthur, The Haunted Trailer
Sorche Nic Leodhas, The Hose that lacked a Bogle
Pamela Ropner, The January Queen
R Chetwynd-Hayes, Brownie
Michael Kenyon, The Ghost of Top Wood
Dorothy Edwards, The Old Whistle Ghost and the Old Grey Ganddad
Margaret Mahy, Looking for a Ghost
Philippa Pearce, At the River-Gates
Ruth Park, Somebody Lives in the Nobody House
J.S. Leatherbarrow, The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara
Joan Aiken, She was Afraid of Upstairs
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Extinguished Lights
Jan Mark, Who's a Pretty Boy Then?
Penelope Lively, Uninvited Ghosts
Farrukh Dhondy, The Bride
George Mackay Brown, Ivor
Vivien Alcock, Siren Song
Aiden Chambers, The Tower
Grace Hallworth, The Guitarist
Leon Garfied, A Grave Misunderstanding
Ruskin Bond, Ghost Trouble
Paul Yee, Spirits of the Railway
Barbara Griffiths, Many Happy Returns!
Robert Westall, The Beach
Susan Price, Across the Fields
Tim Wynne-Jones, The Clearing
John Gordon, The Burning Baby
Biographical Notes

It's a great selection with an excellent introduction and biographical notes - well worth finding a copy.

I agree that the introduction and bibliographical notes are excellent but the only stories I thought better than routine (or worse) are the first two by M.R. James and A.C. Benson and the last one by John Gordon.  But then, I never was a child. 

Here is the cover of the edition that I found in Oxfam. The fact that I did so indicates that the owner of the book who got a personally inscribed copy from Philippa Pearce didn't think much of it either.