Favourite Children's Authors: Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart: A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)

It seems like an auspicious sign that I should have run across a first edition of Mary Stewart's A Walk in Wolf Wood in a vintage shop on New Year's Eve.

It's not my favourite among her children's books, but it's still a nice piece of timeslip fiction, with werewolves, and enchantments, and enchanted talismans, and all the usual appurtenances of her stories.

The American edition was actually subtitled "A Tale of Fantasy and Magic", in case potential buyers might be in doubt on the matter.

Mary Stewart: Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)

More to the point, I'd only seen it previously as a rather scruffy little paperback, whereas this hardback looks exceptionally handsome alongside my copies of her other two books in the genre, Ludo and the Star Horse and The Little Broomstick.

Mary Stewart: The Little Broomstick (1971)

The latter has recently been filmed - with a largely rewritten plot and somewhat sub-standard animation - as Mary and the Witch's Flower by Studio Ghibli. I'm normally a fan of their work, but in this case they didn't really succeed in catching the richly atmospheric simplicity of the original: a fantasy classic if ever there was one.

In particular, Endor College, Madam Mumblechook's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seems like a definite prototype for J. K. Rowling's Hogwarts. And there are many other seemingly throwaway details in Stewart's story, such as the strangely offkilter nursery rhymes recited within the walls of the college, which have stayed stuck in my head for all these years.

Hiromasa Yonebayashi, dir.: Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

The Little Broomstick is probably Stewart's best and most inventive children's book. And yet, despite that, I wouldn't call it my favourite among the three. Ludo and the Star Horse, her cleverly concocted guide to the signs of the Zodiac and other wonders of the night sky, is the one I never tire of.

Of course, as with most children's books, to get their full flavour you really have to have been there - to have read them when you were still a kid. The Little Broomstick was published when I was nine, and Ludo when I was twelve. I don't know when my parents first bought them, but probably on first publication, given the fact that both are first editions.

I certainly had no objections at that age to reading "girly" kid's books alongside the more boy's-own offerings of W. E. Johns, Arthur Catherall et al. My sister Anne was a fan of Mary Stewart's romance novels, which meant that I ended up reading all of those, too. Despite my initial misgivings, I found I really liked them - particularly the ones set in exotic locales such as Provence or the Greek Islands.

Mary Stewart: Romance Novels (2020)

It's alleged that Charles Darwin had two criteria for the novels he read as a respite from his labours: they had to have a happy ending, and the heroine must be good-looking. Much ink has been spilt on the rich irony of this juxtaposition: the prophet of biological determinism a closet sentimentalist in his off-hours!

There's something to be said for such comfortable generic expectations, though. Mary Stewart, the uncrowned "Queen of Romantic Suspense", understood exactly what her audience wanted: a frisson of fear, some dark shadows at the heart of the narrative, but no devastating surprises at the end. She was always more of an Ann Radcliffe than a Monk Lewis.

Mary Stewart: The House of Letterawe

And so it might have gone on indefinitely. She published a new book virtually every year between 1955 and 1968. Her publishers were happy; the fans were satisfied; she seemed to have found her ideal role both in literature and life, in her grand estate on Loch Awe in the Scottish Highlands.

Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave (1970)

But then something happened: something unprecedented and completely off-topic. She wrote the autobiography of a Dark Ages boy with prophetic gifts, a boy called Merlin. She called it The Crystal Cave, after a strange little poem by Orkney writer Edwin Muir:

O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger
Across the memory and the wave?
Or a runner who'll outrun
Man's long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of memory
And hang the apple on the tree?
Will your magic ever show
The sleeping bride shut in her bower,
The day wreathed in its mound of snow
and Time locked in his tower?

Fans of her romance novels had no idea what to make of all this. She did write a few more in that vein, at widely scattered intervals, but from now on she was firmly in the grip of the Arthurian bug, which I've written more about here and here.

I called it "England's Dreaming" in the second of these posts, where I tried to link this fascination with the possible historicity of a figure called "King Arthur" with the wider subject of literary psychogeography.

However you try to account for it, though, this fascinating mania was at its height in the 1960s and 70s - presumably as part of the contemporary revival of New Age ideologies of nature worship and revived paganism.

Geoffrey Ashe, ed.: The Quest for Arthur's Britain (1971)

Geoffrey Ashe's Quest for Arthur's Britain was one of the Bibles of the new faith - even more than his slew of other books on the subject - principally because it seemed to promise concrete archaeological evidence for the existence of a charismatic warlord who flourished in the late 5th century, at much the same time as the romanticised "King Arthur."

A kind of orthodoxy grew up which took for granted that the resistance of the last Romano-Britains against the incoming Saxons had given rise not only to the idea but also a good deal of the detail of the exploits of this "Arthur" - whatever he looked like, and wherever he was based.

The intensity of Mary Stewart's imagination enabled her to flesh out this Romano-British world, still full of the relics of empire but gradually sliding into the chaotic world of tribal rivalries and local warlords.

Joan Grant: Winged Pharaoh (1937)

Her book was, accordingly, a massive success. It remains not only tremendously readable but also strangely persuasive in its vision of those long-lost times, poised between Classical antiquity and the oncoming heroic age. It was as if she'd had a vision, or an out-of-body experience, along the lines of the "reincarnation novels" of English parapsychologist Joan Grant.

The difference was that Mary Stewart could write.

Mary Stewart: The Hollow Hills (1973)

Am I the only one to have found the sequel a little disappointing? Merlin gradually retreats from centre stage to share the limelight with the boy Arthur who (I'm sorry to say) has little of the same incandescent star power.

There's less (I suppose inevitably) of the magic of a child's intense perceptions of the world, and more of the necessary politics involved in setting up a kingdom in Dark Age Britain.

It's still all very well written, mind you - and it's hard to imagine any normal reader actually stopping reading following Stewart's expertly woven story at the end of book one, but I'm afraid that it's The Crystal Cave which remains the masterpiece. The other books simply serve to flesh out the theme it proposes.

Mary Stewart: The Last Enchantment (1979)

Those of us who read these books when they first came out had a long weary wait before we could get out hands on The Last Enchantment. And it was bound to be a disappointment on some level, given this level of anticipation.

It's good enough. It completes the trilogy - Merlin's story is told to its end, though there are still some aspects of Arthur's left to fill in. Or so Stewart must have thought, anyway, as she went on to write a further instalment, devoted to the equally crucial figure of Mordred.

Mary Stewart: The Wicked Day (1983)

He is, of course, in many ways the most interesting character in the whole story: the Judas to Arthur's Christ. No-one's exactly cracked him yet, but there have been some pretty good attempts along the way.

Is this one of them? Up to each reader to decide, I guess. ...

Mary Stewart: The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

And finally, last and definitely least, there's The Prince and the Pilgrim. Stewart was nearly 80 when she published this last addendum to her Arthurian world, and by then the kettle was no longer really on the boil.

The only reason I knew this book even existed was because I found a copy in a bach where I was staying one summer. Of course I promptly read it from cover to cover.

It's not really part of her main Arthurian sequence - nor is it simply a romance novel set in those historical times - but it has elements of both of those things. There's no real harm in it, but it's doubtful if there's much point in it either.

From anyone else, it would simply seem a straightforward potboiler, but I guess it's just the contrast with the wildly passionate writer of The Crystal Cave which makes it seem an unfortunate coda to her career as a visionary historical novelist.

Mary Stewart Omnibus: Rose Cottage / Stormy Petrel / Thornyhold (1999)

She published a few last novella-length fictions in her original romance vein, with occasional flashes of the old brilliance, but the heart of her work lies earlier: in those first fresh novels, intoxicated by the love of travel and romance in foreign parts; also in the magic of the three children's books.

Above all, it rests on the unforgettable intensity of The Crystal Cave.

Weird Tales: The Werewolf Howls (1941)

•

Mary Stewart

Lady Mary Florence Elinor Stewart [née Rainbow]
(1916-2014)

Novels:


1. Madam, Will You Talk? (1955)
   • Madam, Will You Talk? 1955. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1971.
2. Wildfire at Midnight (1956)
   • Wildfire at Midnight. 1956. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1974.
3. Thunder on the Right (1957)
   • Thunder on the Right. 1957. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1972.
4. Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)
   • Nine Coaches Waiting. 1958. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964.
   • The Castle of Danger [Young Adult version] (Longman simplified TESL Series, 1981)
5. My Brother Michael (1959)
   • My Brother Michael. 1959. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
6. The Ivy Tree (1961)
   • The Ivy Tree. 1961. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1975.
7. The Moon-Spinners (1962)
   • The Moonspinners. 1962. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
8. This Rough Magic (1964)
   • This Rough Magic. 1964. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.
9. Airs Above the Ground (1965)
   • Airs Above the Ground. London: Readers Book Club, 1965.
10. The Gabriel Hounds (1967)
    • The Gabriel Hounds. 1967. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1968.
11. The Wind Off the Small Isles (1968)
    • The Wind off the Small Isles. Illustrated by Laurence Irving. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968.
12. Touch Not the Cat (1976)
    • Touch Not the Cat. 1976. Coronet Books. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977.
13. Thornyhold (1988)
14. Stormy Petrel (1991)
    • Stormy Petrel. London: BCA, by arrangement with Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.
15. Rose Cottage (1997)

Series:


16. The Merlin Chronicles (1970-1995)
    1. The Crystal Cave (1970)
       • The Crystal Cave. 1970. Hodder Paperbacks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971.
    2. The Hollow Hills (1973)
       • The Hollow Hills. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973.
    3. The Last Enchantment (1979)
       • The Last Enchantment. 1979. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.
    4. The Wicked Day (1983)
       • The Wicked Day. 1983. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984.
    5. The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)
       • The Prince and the Pilgrim. 1995. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

Children's novels:


17. The Little Broomstick (1971)
    • The Little Broomstick. Illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1971.
18. Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)
    • Ludo and the Star Horse. Illustrated by Gino D’Achille. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1974.
19. A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)
    • A Walk in Wolf Wood. Illustrated by Doreen Caldwell. Hodder and Stoughton Children's Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.

Poetry:


20. Frost on the Window: And other Poems (1990)

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Signs of the Zodiac

1. Aquarius: The Water-Bearer (January 20 – February 18)
   • Deity: GANYMEDE, cupbearer of the gods
2. Pisces: The Fish (February 19 - March 20)
   • Deity: APHRODITE & EROS, goddess of love & god of desire
3. Aries: The Ram (March 21 – April 19)
   • Deity: ARES, god of war
4. Taurus: The Bull (April 20 – May 20)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
5. Gemini: The Twins (May 21 – June 20)
   • Deity: APOLLO & ARTEMIS, the divine siblings
6. Cancer: The Crab (June 21 – July 22)
   • Deity: HERA, queen of the gods
7. Leo: The Lion (July 23 – August 22)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
8. Virgo: The Virgin (August 23 – September 22)
   • Deity: DEMETER, goddess of agriculture
9. Libra: The Scales (September 23 – October 22)
   • Deity: THEMIS, goddess of justice
10. Scorpio: The Scorpion (October 23 – November 21)
    • Deity: ARTEMIS, goddess of the hunt
11. Sagittarius: The Archer (November 22 – December 21)
    • Deity: APOLLO, the archer
12. Capricorn: The Sea-Goat (December 22 – January 19)
    • Deity: PAN, god of the wild

•

Ashes to Ashes: Geoffrey Ashe

[Geoffrey Ashe: All About King Arthur (1969 / 1973)]

One of the first books I ever bought off my own bat was Geoffrey Ashe's All About King Arthur (London: Carousel Books, 1973). The other titles in the series included such gems as "All About Football," "All About Money" and "All About Weather," so you can see that it already stood out as a bit of an anomaly. I must have been about eleven or twelve at the time, and I see from the back that it must have cost 95 cents - not an inconsiderable sum for me back then.

While I suppose that there's no really direct connection with strangely lyrical writer of erotica Aran Ashe, whom I blogged about in a post about different modes of narrative construction last year, one could perhaps argue that both Ashes inhabit a conceptual no-man's-land: in Aran's case, between abnormal psychology and straight pornography; in Geoffrey's, between no-nonsense archaeology and New Age claptrap.

There's no doubt, though, that Geoffrey is the easier to recommend of the two. His books are immensely entertaining, and even quite well written (especially the earlier ones). Nor is there any doubting his basic seriousness when it comes to weighing up stray pieces of evidence bearing on his own King Charles's head: the possible historicity of certain aspects of the Arthurian legend.

For a while after reading that book, King Arthur and the Arthurian Legend was everything to me: T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Mary Stewart's "Merlin" trilogy - you name it, if it had anything to do with King Arthur, I was for it.

The obsession abated after a while, but it left me with an abiding taste for the works of Geoffrey Ashe, author (as I gradually became aware) a whole slew of other titles on King Arthur and kindred subjects. In fact, so many have there come to be, that All About King Arthur has dropped off most of his bibliography lists.

Fair enough, really. It is, in retrospect, little more than a précis of parts of the argument of more "grown-up" books such as King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (1957) and From Caesar to Arthur (1960), not to mention the book of essays The Quest for Arthur’s Britain Ashe edited, with contributions by himself, Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz (1968).

For me at the time, though, it was the door to a strange world of history-cum-romance, a realm bordering on full-on New Age works such as John Michell's The View over Atlantis (first published in that same year, 1969); but also with a strong dose of the dry-as-dust archaeological precision of Leslie Alcock's Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology, AD 367-634 (1971).

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Finger and the Moon (1973 / 2004)]

Even then it was a difficult path to tread, but - as I've continued to follow Ashe's career and publications over the years - it's one he's persevered in ever since: continuing to flirt with fringe history and even occultism, but still retaining a solid reputation for his more carefully researched historical works.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Hell-Fire Clubs (2005)]

Here's a brief list of the Geoffrey Ashe books in my collection. It's more representative than comprehensive, but I think it will give you some idea of the breadth of his interests, and the somewhat disconcerting places those tastes have taken him at times:

[Geoffrey Ashe (1995)]

Geoffrey Ashe (1923- ):
Bibliography

1. King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury. 1957. Fontana Books. London: Collins, 1973.


2. From Caesar to Arthur. London: Collins, 1960.


3. Land to the West: St Brendan’s Voyage to America. London: Collins, 1962.


4. [Ed., with Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz]. The Quest for Arthur’s Britain. 1968. London: Paladin, 1973.


5. All About King Arthur. 1969. London: Carousel Books, 1973.


6. Camelot and the Vision of Albion. 1971. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


7. The Finger and the Moon. 1973. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


8. The Virgin. 1976. Paladin. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


9. The Ancient Wisdom. 1977. Abacus. London: Sphere Books, 1979.


10. Avalonian Quest. 1982. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1984.


11. [in association with Debrett’s Peerage]. The Discovery of King Arthur. London: Guild Publishing, 1985.


12. The Landscape of King Arthur. With Photographs by Simon McBride. London: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, in association with Michael Joseph Limited, 1987.


13. Mythology of the British Isles. 1990. London: Methuen London, 1992.


14. Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Discovery of King Arthur (1985)]

I suppose, on the most basic level, an author has to make a living, and some subjects command better sales than others: notably, in the period in question, books of alternate history in what might be described as the Erich von Däniken mode. Ashe is certainly no von Däniken, but then he's not really a Simon Schama either.

All three could (loosely) be described as popular historians, but - while Geofrrey Ashe is clearly acquainted with archival research and the laws of evidence in a way that von Däniken and his ilk will never be - it's hard to imagine him being made welcome in a modern Academic History department, either. It depends on which university it's in, I suppose.

Books such as The Ancient Wisdom (1977) and Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom (1992) were therefore a little disconcerting to me. He's always careful to hedge his bets, though: and New Age philosophies, particularly the genealogies they construct for certain of their trains of thought, are certainly a legitimate topic of research. At times the line between researcher and apologist seemed a trifle blurry, though.

Then there was his "discovery" of the identity of the "real" King Arthur, outlined in the appropriately named Discovery of King Arthur (1985). All one can say about this is that, though argued passionately and even quit convincingly by Ashe, it doesn't appear to have persuaded the majority of scholars of this period. I guess the jury is still out on that one.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Mythology of the British Isles (1990)]

Where I think Ashe is at his best is in books such as his Mythology of the British Isles. This beautifully illustrated attempt to apply the layout and approach of Robert Graves's Greek Myths to a British context gives him scope to develop his idiosyncratic approach to the European Dark Ages. In an era whose records are (by turns) unreliable or non-existent, a more creative approach is needed to get anywhere near the approximate mind-set of - say - a fifth-century Briton. This Ashe can provide, and the book remains the perfect pendant to his more celebrated books about Glastonbury and the excavations at Cadbury Castle / Camelot.

Do I think that more people should read Geoffrey Ashe? Well, yes, absolutely. I don't say that you should swallow everything he argues, but the fact that he does argue for his hypotheses: carefully, and with close attention to what written and archaeological record there is puts him in a completely different category from other best-selling "alternative historians" such as the equally entertaining (but far less trustworthy) Graham Hancock.

[Geoffrey Ashe: Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002)]

Somehow, in books such as Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002), the ruins turn out never to be accessible that day - whether it be a recent storm, or difficult tides, the dive has to be postponed, the evidence is not quite ready to hand. His books - cogently written thought some parts of them undoubtedly are - do not stand up to scrutiny. They tease rather than reveal.

Geoffrey Ashe is not like that. He means what he says, and he won't go beyond the borders of his evidence, however hard he strains at the leash sometimes. What's more, he has the gift of conveying something of the magic of the unknown, the conjectural ... I think I made a better choice than I knew that day back in the early 70s, when I bought that unassuming little book from that newly opened bookshop in Mairangi Bay.

[Ashes to Ashes (1980)]