Rosemary Pardoe - The Black Pilgrimage 2

[dem bones]

Many thanks to David A. Sutton for sharing this first glimpse of the TOC.

Rosemary Pardoe - The Black Pilgrimage 2: Further Explorations in Supernatural Fiction (Shadow Publishing, June 2023)

Introduction

Part One: M.R. James and Jamesian-related Writings

“Tha hast conjured me”: Dan Jones’s The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings

“He was laughing in the church”: Disembodied Voices in the Stories of M.R. James

The M.R. James Murders: Nicola Upson’s Nine Lessons

M.R. James’s Suffolk: Simon Loxley’s A Geography of Horror: The Ghost Stories of M.R. James and the Suffolk Landscape

Something happened in Felixstowe: Robert Lloyd Parry’s Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You and Wits in Felixstowe

Michael Harrison 1907-1991

Two Lesser-Known John Gordon Novels: The Ghosts of Blacklode and The Midwinter Watch

“BE his Life Squeezed Away”: Fritz Leiber’s The Pale Brown Thing

The Return of Cindy Mars-Lewis: Phil Rickman’s Night After Night

Things that Go Bump in the Night: Roger Johnson’s In the Night - In the Dark: Tales of Ghosts and Less Welcome Visitors

Part Two: The Rest

The Immortal William Palmer: Sebastian Baczkiewicz’s Pilgrim

The Real Thing Again (or perhaps not): Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood and The Night Country

“More Bones and Marrow for our Babies”: Daisy Makeig-Jones’s Fairyland Lustreware

The Mystery and Magic of Rooftops: Helen Grant’s Demons of Ghent

“A Sense of Otherness”: Folk Horror Revival’s Urban Wyrd and Harvest Hymns

“The Flame Still Flickers in the Fen”: Of Mud & Flame: The Penda’s Fen Sourcebook

Not the F-word: Mackenzie Crook’s The Windvale Sprites and The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth

A Welsh Wild Hunt: Claire Fayers’ Storm Hound

The Mad World of Lionel Fanthorpe and Noel Boston: Shane P.D. Agnew’s John Spencer & Co

Windhollow Faire: Elizabeth Hand’s Wylding Hall

An Ineffably Strange Place: Mark Valentine’s Herald of the Hidden and Seventeen Stories

“A Sense of an Ancient Longing”: Tom Cox’s Villager and Zoe Gilbert’s Mischief Acts

Part Three: Ghosts & Scholars Columns

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 1: Robert Macfarlane’s Ness and Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 2: The Portals of London website

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 3 (Part One): Possible Jamesian aspects of Detectorists

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 3 (Part Two): Did M.R. James read any of Lovecraft’s stories?

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 4: Female ghosts in M.R. James’s Stories and The Recurrence of Characters Named Mary

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 5: Dogs in M.R. James’s Stories

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 6: Geographical locations in M.R. James’s Stories

Lady Wardrop’s Notes 7: The Supernatural Consequences of HS2

Part Four: Introductions

Introduction: The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows Volume 1

Introduction: The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows Volume 2

Introduction: The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows Volume 3

Introduction (Extended Version): A Ghosts & Scholars Book of Folk Horror

Introduction: The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Mazes

Introduction: The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Follies & Grottoes

Introduction: The Angry Dead

Part Five: Booklets

The Cropton Lane Farm Murders

“The Old Man on the Hill”: English Hill Figures in Supernatural Fiction

English Hill Figures: Addenda

Part Six: And Finally

The Wormwood Interview: Rosemary Pardoe

Blurb

The celebrated writer M.R. James is arguably the most significant author of ghost stories in the world. His macabre work has terrified and fascinated readers for over a hundred years.

Now collected in this second volume, here are a further forty-one essays by editor and James scholar Rosemary Pardoe.

As well as James and Jamesian related writings on the likes of Robert Lloyd Parry, Michael Harrison and Fritz Leiber, essays include the work of Helen Grant, Mackenzie Crook, Mark Valentine, Elizabeth Hand and others, some from the tiny-circulation ’zine Lady Wardrop‘s Journal. Also included in this volume are Ghosts & Scholars columns (Lady Wardrop’s Notes), plus seven introductions and two booklets written by the author.

PUBLICATION DATE: 30th JUNE 2023

[dem bones]

Just arrived from Shadow Publications

Darroll Pardoe The Museum Room from Rosemary Pardoe's Antiquaries Doll's House

Blurb:

THE GHOSTLY WORK OF M.R. JAMES
The celebrated writer M.R. James is arguably the most significant author of ghost stories in the world. His macabre work has terrified and fascinated readers for over a hundred years.
Now collected in this second volume, here are a further forty-one essays by editor and James scholar Rosemary Pardoe.
As well as James and Jamesian related writings by the likes of Robert Lloyd Parry, Michael Harrison and Fritz Leiber, essays include the work of Helen Grant, Mackenzie Crook, Mark Valentine, Elizabeth Hand and others, some from the tiny-circulation 'zine Lady Wardrop's Journal.
Also included in this volume are Ghosts & Scholars columns (Lady Wardrop's Notes), plus seven introductions and two booklets written by the author.

Available via:

Am*z*n.uk

Am*z*n

[dem bones]

Illustrated Police News, 23 Nov. 1873

"They tried to find the poor boy's body,
They search'd around both night and day,
Human bones they have discovered.
That ravenous pigs had gnawed away;
The cruel monster perhaps did murder,
The helpless unoffending boy,
And threw his body in the pigsty,
There all traces to destroy."

Been dipping into Ro's latest, two or three articles at a time, since it arrived. Several items will be familiar to G&S readers, though even the most recent of these have been revised and, in the case of "The Old Man of the Hill" English Hill Figures in Supernatural Fiction, much expanded upon, as additional material comes to light. Without checking, it does seem as though there are fewer M. R. James-specific articles than in the previous volume, though more often than not, there will be a connection to his life and/ or works. Featured topics include folk horror, adventures in fairyland, and the - dire, we can but hope - supernatural consequences of HS2; Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief and its relation to Elizabeth Hand's Wylding Hall (straight to wants list) and vice versa; a dip into Christine Campbell Thomson's You'll Need a Nightlight and By Daylight Only (a "13 Things You Didn't Know About ..." piece on Spooky Isles claims M R James "hated" Lovecraft's fiction; Ro wonders if he even got to read any *); MacKenzie Crook and Detectorists; a cheery appraisal of Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe, Noel Boston and Badger Books (via a review of Shane P. D. Agnew's John Spencer & Co). My favourite piece to date (still have the introductions to go) is The Cropton-Lane Farm Murders, an account of a Victorian crime referenced by M. R. James in Eton & Kings, and commemorated in a ghastly broadside ballad. On first glance a relatively straightforward affair — a farmer batters dead a belligerent cousin and his nine-year-old son, disposing of the corpses in a pond and a pig pen respectively — the verdict, however just, seems unlikely even today.

* As James is insistent that it is "some Americans, who compile volumes called Not at Night and the like," it could be he read the Herbert Asbury edited Not At Night! (Macy-Masius, New York, 1928), a selection derived from CCT's Not at Night, More Not At Night and You'll Need A Nightlight. If this was the case, then James had opportunity to read The Horror at Red Hook but not Pickman's Model.