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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 9, 2021 18:01:15 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Aug 10, 2021 11:52:08 GMT
Thank you for drawing our attention to these. They look really strong selections - but maybe more-so for those who've not already dug too deep into the British Library 'Tales of the Weird' series (there is much crossover. Check out the contents of the James Machin edited British Weird from same publisher). Melissa Edmundson (ed.) Womenās Weird. Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 (Handheld, 2019) Notes Further reading Biographical notes Bibliographical details
Louisa Baldwin - The Weird of the Walfords Mary Cholmondeley - Let Loose Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Giant Wistaria Edith Nesbit - The Shadow Edith Wharton - Kerfol Francis Stevens - Unseen - Unfeared Elinor Mordaunt - Hodge May Sinclair - There Their Fire Is Not Quenched Margery Lawrence - The Haunted Saucepan Eleanor Scott - The Twelve Apostles Margaret Irwin - The Book D K Broster - Couching at the Door Mary Butts - With and Without Buttons
Notes Kate MacdonaldMelissa Edmundson (ed), Womenās Weird 2. More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937 (Handheld, 2020) Acknowledgments Introduction by Melissa Edmundson Works Cited Biographical notes Bibliographical details
Edith Stewart Drewry - Twin-Identity Lettice Galbraith - The Blue Room Sarah Orne Jewett - The Green Bowl Barbara Baynton - Dreamer Mary E Wilkins Freeman - The Hall Bedroom Katherine Mansfield - The House Bithia Mary Croker - The Red Bungalow Bessie Kyffin-Taylor - Outside the House Marjorie Bowen - Florence Flannery Helen Simpson - Young Magic Lucy Maud Montgomery - The House Party at Smoky Island Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The Black Stone Statue Stella Gibbons - Roaring Tower
Notes on the stories by Kate Macdonald
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 10, 2021 12:09:26 GMT
About Melissa Edmundson:
Melissa Edmundson researches and publishes on nineteenth and early twentieth- century British women writers, with a particular interest in womenās supernatural fiction. She is the editor of a 2011 critical edition of Alice Perrinās East of Suez (1901), and author of Womenās Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain (University of Wales Press, 2013) and Womenās Colonial Gothic Writing, 1850ā1930: Haunted Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She edited Avenging Angels: Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers (Victorian Secrets, 2018).
āThe Haunted Saucepanā by Margery Lawrence 1926, is from Nights of the Round. Table.
āThe Bookā by Margaret Irwin 1935, is from Madame Fears the Dark.
In the introduction she uses Lovecraft to help define Weird fiction:
Throughout the twentieth century, there have been numerous attempts to define and classify the Weird tale. H P Lovecraft, in Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927), described the Weird tale as something more than a traditional ghost story: āThe true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to ruleā. For Lovecraft, the feeling inspired while reading is important:
A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain ā a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space. (Lovecraft 1973, 15)
He continues by saying, āAtmosphere is the all-important thingā (16) and that ā[t]he one test of the really Weird is simply this ā whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and pow- ersā
Would people say that weird fiction involves challenging our everyday normality. Telling us that what we think of as fixed rules of nature are nothing of the sort? And the disturbing aspect is that we haven't a clue what is going on? And that means the universe and our place in it is nothing like we believe.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 10, 2021 12:17:21 GMT
Further Reading list:
Adeane, Louis, āAn Appraisal of Mary Butts,ā A Sacred Quest: The Life and Writings of Mary Butts, Christopher Wagstaff (ed.) (McPherson & Company, 1995), 97ā106. Adrian, Jack, āIntroduction,ā Couching at the Door, Jack Adrian (ed.) (Ash-Tree Press, 2001), ixāxxxi.
Bleiler, E F, āIntroduction,ā Best Ghost Stories of J S LeFanu, E F Bleiler (ed.) (Dover, 1964), vāxi.
Blondel, Nathalie (ed.), The Journals of Mary Butts (Yale University Press, 2002).
Bowen, Elizabeth, āIntroduction,ā The Second Ghost Book (1952), Lady Cynthia Asquith (ed.) (Pan Books, 1956), viiāx.
Butts, Mary, āGhosties and Ghoulies: Uses of the Supernatural in English Fiction,ā The Bookman (January 1933), 386ā389. ā, āGhosties and Ghoulies: Uses of the Supernatural in English Fiction,ā The Book- man (April 1933), 12ā14.
Dalby, Richard, āAfterword,ā Randalls Round (Oleander Press, 2010), 169ā175. ā, āIntroduction,ā Nights of the Round Table (Ash-Tree Press, 1998), ixāxix.
Edmundson, Melissa, āBuyer beware: Haunted objects in the super-natural tales of Margery Lawrenceā, in The Female Fantastic: The Gendered Supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s, Elizabeth McCormick, Jennifer Mitchell, and Rebecca Soares (eds.) (Routledge, 2018), 50ā64.
Fedorko, Kathy A, Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton (The University of Alabama Press, 1995).
Fitzsimons, Eleanor, The Life and Loves of E Nesbit (Duckworth, 2019).
Flanders, Judith, Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter, and Louisa Baldwin (W W Norton, 2001).
Hartley, Cathy (ed.) A Historical Dictionary of British Women (Routledge, 2003).
Hollinger, Veronica, āGenre vs. Mode,ā in The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, Rob Latham (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2014, 139ā51.
Hoppenstand, Gary, āFrancis Stevens: The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy,ā The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, Gary Hoppenstand (ed.) (Univer- sity of Nebraska Press, 2004), ixāxxv. Lovecraft, H P, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927) (Dover, 1973). ā, āThe Horror at Red Hookā (1927), H P Lovecraft: Tales (The Library of America, 2005), 125ā146.
Machin, James, Weird Fiction in Britain, 1880ā1939 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Russ, Joanna, How to Suppress Womenās Writing (1983) (University of Texas Press, 2005).
Scott, Eleanor, āForeword,ā Randalls Round (Oleander Press, 2010), 7.
VanderMeer, Ann and Jeff, āIntroduction,ā The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.) (Tor,2011), xvāxx.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 10, 2021 12:19:32 GMT
Would people say that weird fiction involves challenging our everyday normality. Telling us that what we think of as fixed rules of nature are nothing of the sort? And the disturbing aspect is that we haven't a clue what is going on? And that means the universe and our place in it is nothing like we believe. Some might. I'd say it provides wonderful entertainment, and that will do me.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 10, 2021 12:21:49 GMT
Would people say that weird fiction involves challenging our everyday normality. Telling us that what we think of as fixed rules of nature are nothing of the sort? And the disturbing aspect is that we haven't a clue what is going on? And that means the universe and our place in it is nothing like we believe. Some might. I'd say it provides wonderful entertainment, and that will do me. I was trying to sound impressive. But I've been brought crashing down to Earth.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 10, 2021 12:25:02 GMT
I always find the recommended reading lists that some editors include really useful for future reading.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 10, 2021 12:38:29 GMT
Would people say that weird fiction involves challenging our everyday normality. Telling us that what we think of as fixed rules of nature are nothing of the sort? And the disturbing aspect is that we haven't a clue what is going on? And that means the universe and our place in it is nothing like we believe. Some might. I'd say it provides wonderful entertainment, and that will do me. Everyone has bespoke goals in what they need from fiction.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 10, 2021 12:42:53 GMT
Bowen, Elizabeth, āIntroduction,ā The Second Ghost Book (1952), Lady Cynthia Asquith (ed.) (Pan Books, 1956), viiāx. Thanks for letting me know that my favourite writer wrote an intro for this book!
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 10, 2021 13:14:27 GMT
She mentions two early female authors:
Womenās early supernatural fiction was largely centered around the figure of the ghost. The first decade of the seventeenth century saw the publication of Sarah Malthusās pamphlet King Williamās Ghost (1704). Towards mid-century, Elizabeth Boyd contributed to the ballad tradition with Altamiraās Ghost; Or Justice Tri- umphant (1744).
I looked up Sarah Malthus. She took over her husband's printing, publishing and bookselling business after he sadly died. She published pamphlets that were satires on the late monarchy. She must have been a rare figure at the time.
My information is from:
Frankenstein 200: The Birth, Life, and Resurrection of Mary Shelley's Monster by Rebecca Baumann.
This text also mentions Elizabeth Boyd's Altamiraās Ghost; Or Justice Triumphant. It concerns a female spirit returning to prove the legitimacy of an orphan's inheritance. She wrote other supernatural works. Apparently there was "an accepted literary device" at the time: the "female-apparition narrative". It allowed the female ghost to comment on the wrongs did to women by men, such as domestic abuse. It was a way of discussing the injustices of a male dominated society.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 10, 2021 13:20:35 GMT
Apparently there was "an accepted literary device" at the time: the "female-apparition narrative". It allowed the female ghost to comment on the wrongs did to women by men, such as domestic abuse. It was a way of discussing the injustices of a male dominated society. Thanks. And that bit was particularly interesting. Mrs Riddell?
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 10, 2021 13:47:21 GMT
Would people say that weird fiction involves challenging our everyday normality. Telling us that what we think of as fixed rules of nature are nothing of the sort? And the disturbing aspect is that we haven't a clue what is going on? And that means the universe and our place in it is nothing like we believe. I think that's what a lot of people probably would say, following the Lovecraft / Weird Tales magazine idea of "weird". But, when I use it, I mean something much broader that includes "traditional" ghost stories and the like. To the extent that I think about it all, for me "weird" is the umbrella term rather than a specific sub-type. "Weird" means non-ordinary, anomalous. So, yes anything that suggests we are wrong about some fundamental aspect of existence. But, for me, anything "supernatural" would have to be included - the supernatural is non-ordinary and anomalous, so it is "weird". It's basic logic. And we've got "cosmic horror" if you want a specific label for Lovecraft et al. This was the way the word was used anyway before the WT magazine came along - and then Lovecraft basically redefined it to mean what he wanted it to - but that's really more an American thing anyway, and the British usage of "weird" has more often stuck to the original (i.e. correct) meaning like those old volumes of short stories from 1888.
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 10, 2021 14:28:26 GMT
Machin, James, Weird Fiction in Britain, 1880ā1939 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). I've got a pdf of this that I found on Google Scholar. It's pretty "academic", based on his PhD (supervised by Roger Luckhurst), but quite interesting to dip into. He sees M.P. Shiel, R. Murray Gilchrist, Count Stenbock, Arthur Machen, and John Buchan as key figures in the development of "weird fiction" in Edwardian Britain. He argues that this Edwardian weird fiction (at least in Britain/Europe) should be seen as a "persistence of Decadence... without contesting its involvement within the wider Gothic tradition".
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jan 20, 2022 15:11:07 GMT
blurb: The Gap in the Curtain tells the story of five country-house guests who are trained by the ailing Professor Moe, an Einsteinian mathematician who has devised a way of seeing into the future. These five guests gain one piece of knowledge from the experiment, and have to decide how to act on it. The episodes vary from high drama to social comedy, and use Buchanās skill in writing political intrigue and adventure abroad. This is a novel that showcases Buchanās talents as a storyteller, with an remarkable variety of settings, characters and strange situations. Are these incidents down to suggestive psychologies, or has something weird happened? The Introduction is by Kate Macdonald, author of John Buchan. A Companion to the Mystery Fiction, and many other works on Buchanās writing.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jan 20, 2022 15:26:11 GMT
I noticed this cover used by other publishers and it is from an earlier edition. See seperate thread.
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