Favourite Children's Authors: E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902)

I couldn't quite bring myself to head this post with any of the images associated with the two dreadful films lately imposed upon E. Nesbit's classic novel:

John Stephenson, dir.: Five Children and It (2004)

Both are completely without charm, magic, or mystery - the things the original novel abounds in. Eddie Izzard's star-turn as grumpy sand fairy the Psammead in John Stephenson's 2004 effort certainly stresses the creature's obnoxious personality. It lacks any other discernible appeal.

Andy De Emmony, dir.: Four Kids and It (2020)

Bad though Stephenson's film is, though, I would nevertheless have to award the prize for worst Nesbit-adjacent feature film to Andy De Emmony's Four Kids and It. Russell Brand is the token comedic presence in this one, and his prancing antics make Eddie Izzard look like Laurence Olivier.

It is, admittedly, based on a more recent novel "inspired by" E. Nesbit's original - which means that a particularly mawkish and inappropriate love story has been shovelled into the story, complete with couple-surprised-in-the-middle-of-a-shag antics which would make a crow blush.

E. Nesbit: The Adventures of the Five Children (2009)

Does that sound a bit harsh? Both films were, after all, presumably intended for an audience somewhat younger than myself, and it's my own silly fault if I chose to watch them to the end.

I suppose, in my defence, it was because the "Five Children" books - Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet - were one of my earliest reading experiences, and the simple elegance of H. R. Millar's illustrations added greatly to their appeal for me at the time.

H. R. Millar: The Children discover the Psammead (1902)

They look a bit old-fashioned now. But then, so are the books. They constitute a little time-capsule of Edwardian attitudes for readers today, but their storytelling backbone remains strong.

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E. Nesbit: The Enchanted Castle (2007)

À propos of Millar's illustrations, a few years after first reading The Enchanted Castle, one of my particular favourites among Nesbit's books, in my parents' old hardback edition, I bought myself a handsome-looking copy from a second-hand shop.

E. Nesbit: The Enchanted Castle (1964)

I was dismayed to discover that it had a new set of illustrations, which almost entirely negated (for me, at least) the powerful atmosphere created by this most magical - and sinister - of her novels.

H. R. Millar: The audience of Ugly-Wugglies

In the crucial scene where the set of hastily assembled dummies created by the children as an audience for their new play comes to life, for instance, the full horror of the situation turned out to have been greatly assisted for me by Millar's illustrations.

H. R. Millar: The Ugly-Wugglies come to life

But the hall was crowded with live things, strange things — all horribly short as broomsticks and umbrellas are short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed white face with red cheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips said something, he could not tell what. The voice reminded him of the old beggar down by the bridge who had no roof to his mouth. These creatures had no roofs to their mouths, of course — they had no ——

"Aa oo ré o me me oo a oo ho el?" said the voice again. And it had said it four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently to understand that this horror — alive, and most likely quite uncontrollable — was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite persistence: —

"Can you recommend me to a good hotel?"

The macabre nature of this encounter makes much better sense to me now than I know a bit more about Edith Bland (née Nesbit)'s earlier life, and - in particular - the large number of books she'd already written before achieving a hit with the Bastable series around the turn of the century.

E. Nesbit: The Bastable Family (1899-1904)

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Nesbit had tried pretty much every other type of writing before turning to children's fiction. She started off with a set of problem novels written under the pseudonym of "Fabian Bland", before turning successively to detective stories, ghost stories, journalism, and even poetry.

S. T. Joshi, ed.: From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories of E. Nesbit (2018)

Now her horror stories are a hit. You'll note in the bibliography below at least five recent selections from her corpus of such tales. At the time, though, they didn't succeed in distinguishing her from all the other late Victorian / early Edwardian writers obsessed with the occult.

It does help one understand, though, why her children's stories are so dominated by weird talismans, magical creatures, and mysterious concealed spaces. Even C. S. Lewis admitted that it was The Story of the Amulet (1906) which first awoke him to what he referred to - quoting Shakespeare - as "the dark backward and abysm of time."

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The Fabian Society

Another essential thing to remember is her dedication to social reform and left-wing politics. Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland were among the founding members of the Fabian Society in 1884, and jointly edited its journal Today.

Initially they both used the pseudonym "Fabian Bland", but it soon became apparent that his serial adulteries and lack of business sense meant that - for the foreseeable future - she would have to remain the family breadwinner, and pay all the bills with her own writing. She therefore shifted to calling herself "E. Nesbit".

Despite her life-long radicalism, she was not a strong proponent of women's rights:

She opposed the cause of women’s suffrage — mainly, she claimed, because women could swing Tory, thus harming the Socialist cause.

That might be another reason she chose to follow in the tradition of Currer, Ellis, & Acton Bell - and, for that matter, George Eliot - by constructing a neutral name to help sell her work to gender-biassed editors.

I used to wonder if she'd chosen "E. Nesbit" rather than "Edith Nesbit" as her nom-de-plume to distinguish herself from Evelyn Nesbit, the turn-of-the-century American fashion model who (allegedly) provoked the murder of architect Stanford White by her husband, Harry Thaw. The resulting 1906 "Trial of the Century" made the former's gilded age morals and lifestyle notorious.

Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr.: Evelyn Nesbit (1903)

The dates, however, don't really fit. Strangely enough, Evelyn Nesbit does have her own unusual connection with children's fiction. The picture above helped Canadian author L. M. Montgomery conceive the character of Anne Shirley, the heroine of her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables. It reminded her - apparently - of "youthful idealism and spirituality."

Edith Nesbit (1892)

Edith Nesbit herself was a very different kettle of fish. She was a professional writer, used to turning her hand to any kind of work which was likely to sell. But there was more to it than that. Something clicked into place when she turned to children's fiction.

She was no fin-de-siècle Geoffrey Trease. She didn't proselytise directly in her writing, but it was hard for her to avoid displaying a social conscience in at least some of her stories. The Railway Children, obviously, but also in lesser-known books such as Harding's Luck.

E. Nesbit: Harding's Luck (1909)

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Julia Smith, dir.: The Railway Children. Adapted by Denis Constanduros (1968)

The Railway Children is probably her most celebrated, and undoubtedly her most frequently dramatised book. My own memory goes back to the TV series above, which I found rather grim and terrifying at the time. Just reading the episode summaries recalls some of the anguish it caused me:

When their father is taken away on Christmas Day by two gentlemen from the Foreign Office and fails to return in the next few weeks, his wife announces that she and the children ... will be moving to Yorkshire "to play at being poor for a while."

It was all so realistic - not at all like the other children's TV we watched. I can still replay in my mind the horror of the scene where one of the children is caught stealing coal by the previously well-disposed Station Master.

It's been adapted for the screen a number of times since then - feature films in 1970 and 2000, as well as a sequel, The Railway Children Return (2022) set, this time, in 1944.

Jenny Agutter (1970 / 2022)

The common thread in all these versions is veteran actor Jenny Agutter, who's shifted from being one of the children, to being their mother, and (finally) their wartime caregiver. She must be getting pretty sick of the whole business by now! (I must confess to having had a considerable crush on her back in the 1970s after seeing her in such films as Nic Roeg's Walkabout and - especially - the Sci-fi classic Logan's Run).

The Railway Children is not really representative of the general run of Nesbit's children's books, though it does include some of her favourite themes. Being hard-up and desperately needing to find money somewhere is a common predicament in her books (the Bastable series, for instance). The fairly realistic way in which sibling solidarity - and rivalry - is portrayed is a strong point in most of her ensemble casts. And, finally, there's the deus ex machina of a rich uncle or deceased relative providing vitally needed funds, or lodgings, at the last minute.

Are they really of interest to modern children? Who can say? The ones who've been reading Dickens and Jane Austen from an early age might find them a bit too predictable, but the comedy of manners embedded in such fantasies as The Phoenix and the Carpet is surely evergreen.

I'm glad I read them at an age when the hints they gave of abandoned temples in the Middle East, or Ancient Egyptian amulets, were all that was needed to spark my imagination. It's true that Nesbit invented a good deal of the magical lore she included. The word "Psammead", for instance:

appears to be a coinage by Nesbit from the Greek ψάμμος "sand" after the pattern of dryad, naiad and oread, implicitly signifying "sand-nymph".

I can't help suspecting that the same is true of the House of Arden's "Mouldiwarp" (an archaic term for mole).

Yes, they're fantasy, they're escapism, but that's not all they are. She didn't set out to preach directly in her books, but they do remind you to be kind to strangers - as well as your brothers and sisters; to be respectful to your elders and betters (within reason, at any rate); and never to neglect the chance to learn something new, or to take part in an unexpected adventure.

They may seem snobby to a modern reader, but it's as well to remember that Nesbit herself was never blind to the presence of the servant with the scrubbing brush at the back of the scene, as in the H. R. Millar illustration below:

E. Nesbit: The House of Arden (1908)

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Noel Streatfeild: Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children's Books (1958)

Nesbit's biographical fortunes have been a bit up and down in the century since her death. Doris Langley Moore's pioneering account E. Nesbit (1933 / revised 1966) was followed 25 years later by a considerably blander study of her simply as a children's author by "Ballet Shoes" writer Noel Streatfeild. The blurb for her book claims:

Here is a delightful tribute to a great writer. It will be enjoyed by anyone acquainted with the E. Nesbit stories, as well as by Noel Streatfeild's many admirers.

She followed it up with a reprint of some early reminiscences by Nesbit:

E. Nesbit: Long Ago When I Was Young (1966)

Together these two books had the - possibly unintentional - effect of muting her reputation as a radical thinker for a number of years. It wasn't until Julia Briggs' A Woman of Passion came out in the mid-1980s that the full complexity of her family life, not to mention her extensive involvement in politics, were revealed.

Julia Briggs: A Woman of Passion (1987)

It's been claimed, possibly correctly, that "as a biography ... it relies heavily on the earlier incarnation written by Doris Langley Moore, whose biography of Nesbit ... used interviews with surviving family members, letters, newspapers and the other usual stories to write Edith's story." Briggs, however, "delves a little further."

I for one found it fascinating when I first read it. Nothing in Streatfeild's bland chronicle had prepared me for the fascination of the story recounted here.

Eleanor Fitzsimons: The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (2019)

Since then two more biographies have appeared: Elisabeth Galvin's The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit: Author of Five Children and It and The Railway Children (2018), and Eleanor Fitzsimons' The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Victorian Iconoclast, Children's Author, and Creator of the Railway Children (2019).

Which one is better? Well, it depends on what you're looking for, I suppose. Fitzsimons' book is twice as long, far more detailed, and was chosen as A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year. It's even been described as the "first major biography of the trailblazing, controversial children's author."

On the other hand, it's had a mixed response from Amazon's own homegrown reviewers. Dave Ansell, for instance, comments:

I wonder why Fitzsimons troubled to write her biography as it offers little that hasn’t been said before. Briggs’s biography is over 100 pages longer. Fitzsimons gives chapter notes but no bibliography. Briggs has a bibliography. There are few photographs – Briggs gives many more as well as illustrations. At the end, Fitzsimons gives a brief account of how Nesbit has influenced other writers, including J K Rowling. In another recent biography, The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit by Elizabeth Galvin (2018), there is more about Nesbit’s influence, including a short chapter on Harry Potter, and information about TV and cinema films. This biography also includes a useful family tree, 50 of the Best Works by E Nesbit, and a clever ‘Edith’s Guide to Life’.

Elisabeth Galvin: The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit (2018)

On the other hand, if we turn to the comments about Galvin's own book, we find a comparably lukewarm response:

It is generally well written but there are a number of awkward usages and redundancies that would have been better edited out. I think the editor must have been asleep. Still a good read for E. Nesbit fans.

On the whole, then, having read these unvarnished responses, it sounds as if it might be just as well to stick with Briggs' lively account - or, for that matter, to hunt out a copy of the revised, 1966 version of Doris Langley Moore's biography.

Doris Langley Moore: E. Nesbit: A Biography (1933 / 1966)

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E. Nesbit (c.1890)

Edith Bland [née Nesbit]
(1858-1924)

Books for Adults

Novels:


1. [As Fabian Bland] The Prophet's Mantle (1885)
2. [As Fabian Bland] Something Wrong (1886)
3. [As Fabian Bland] The Marden Mystery (1896)
4. The Secret of Kyriels (1899)
5. The Red House (1902)
6. The Incomplete Amorist (1906)
7. Salome and the Head [aka The House with No Address] (1909)
8. Daphne in Fitzroy Street (1909)
9. Dormant [aka Rose Royal] (1911)
10. The Incredible Honeymoon (1916)
11. The Lark (1922)

Collections:


12. Grim Tales (1893)
13. Something Wrong (1893)
14. "Hurst of Hurstcote" (1893)
15. The Ebony Frame (1893)
16. [with Oswald Barron] The Butler in Bohemia (1894)
17. In Homespun: Stories in English Dialect (1896)
18. Thirteen Ways Home (1901)
19. The Literary Sense (1903)
20. Man and Maid (1906)
21. "The Third Drug" (Strand Magazine, 1908)
22. These Little Ones (1909)
23. Fear (1910)
24. To the Adventurous (1923)
25. E. Nesbit's Tales of Terror. Ed. Hugh Lamb (1983)
    • In the Dark: Tales of Terror. Ed. Hugh Lamb. 1983. Rev. ed (1988)
    • In the Dark. Ed. Hugh Lamb. 1983. Rev. ed, 1988. Expanded ed. (2000)
26. In the Dark (2000)
27. Man-Size in Marble and Others: The Best Horror and Ghost Stories of E. Nesbit. Annotated & Illustrated by M. Grant Kellermeyer (2015)
28. Horror Stories. Introduction by Naomi Alderman (2017)
29. From the Dead: The Complete Weird Stories of E. Nesbit. Ed. S. T. Joshi (2018)
30. The House of Silence: Ghost Stories 1887–1920 Introduction by Melissa Edmundson (2024)

Children's Books

The Bastable Series:

The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899)

• The Story of the Treasure-Seekers. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1899. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.

The Wouldbegoods (1901)

• The Wouldbegoods. Illustrated by Cecil Leslie. 1901. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.

The New Treasure Seekers (1904)

• The New Treasure-Seekers. 1904. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

The Adventures of the Treasure Seekers. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1947. London: The Folio Society, 1993.

1. The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune (1899)
2. The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers (1901)
3. The New Treasure Seekers (1904)

Oswald Bastable and Others (1905)

The Psammead series:

Five Children and It (1902)

• Five Children and It. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1902. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1970.

The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904)

• The Phoenix and the Carpet. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1904. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1973.

The Story of the Amulet (1906)

• The Story of the Amulet. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1906. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1969.

The House of Arden series:

The House of Arden (1908)

• The House of Arden. Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone & George Buchanan. 1908. Puffin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.

Harding's Luck (1909)

• Harding’s Luck. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1909. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1961.


Novels:


31. The Railway Children (1906)
    • The Railway Children. 1906. Illustrated by Lynton Lamb. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1972.
32. The Enchanted Castle (1907)
    • The Enchanted Castle. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1907. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1960.
33. The Magic City (1910)
    • The Magic City. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1910. Facsimile Classic Series. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1980.
34. The Wonderful Garden (1911)
    • The Wonderful Garden. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1911. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1959.
35. Wet Magic (1913)
    • Wet Magic. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1913. London: Ernest Benn Limited / New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1958.
36. Five of Us — and Madeline (1925)
    • Five of Us - and Madeline. Illustrated by Nora S. Unwin. 1925. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1931.

Collections:


37. Miss Mischief (1894)
38. Tick Tock, Tales of the Clock (1895)
39. Pussy Tales (1895)
40. Doggy Tales (1895)
41. The Children's Shakespeare (1897) [aka Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (1907)]
42. Royal Children of English History (1897)
43. [with others] Tales Told in the Twilight (1897)
44. The Book of Dogs (1898)
45. Pussy and Doggy Tales (1899)
46. The Book of Dragons (1901)
    • The Complete Book of Dragons. Illustrated by Erik Blegvad. 1901. London: Hamish Hamilton Children's Books Ltd., 1972.
47. Nine Unlikely Tales (1901)
    • Nine Unlikely Tales for Children. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. 1901. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
48. The Revolt of the Toys (1902)
49. The Rainbow Queen and Other Stories (1903)
50. Playtime Stories (1903)
51. The Story of Five Rebellious Dolls (1904)
52. [with Rosamund E. Nesbit Bland] Cat Tales (1904)
53. Pug Peter, King of Mouseland (1905)
54. The Old Nursery Stories (1908)
55. The Magic World (1912)
    • The Magic World. Illustrated by H. R. Millar & Spencer Pryse. 1912. Facsimile Classic Series. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1980.
56. Fairy Stories. Ed. Naomi Lewis (1977)
    • Fairy Stories. Ed. Naomi Lewis. Illustrated by Brian Robb. London & Tonbridge: Ernest Benn Limited, 1977.

Non-fiction:


57. Wings and the Child, or The Building of Magic Cities (1913)
58. Long Ago When I Was Young (1896-97 / 1966)
    • Long Ago When I Was Young. Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone & George Buchanan. 1966. Introduction by Noel Streatfield. London: Beehive Books, 1987.

Poetry:


59. Slave Song (1899)

Secondary:


60. Moore, Doris Langley. E. Nesbit: A Biography (1933)
61. Streatfeild, Noel. Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and her Children’s Books (1958)
62. Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion (1987)
    • Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. 1987. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989.
63. Galvin, Elisabeth. The Extraordinary Life of E. Nesbit (2018)
64. Fitzsimons, Eleanor. The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (2019)

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Aspects of Emily

Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson
[Alena Smith: Dickinson (2019-21)]

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

- Emily Dickinson: "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"

Who is [Emily]? What is she, / That all our swains commend her?

Recently I was asked to review a new collection by a veteran local poet for Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook. In my piece I made a passing reference to the line:

'Hope' is the thing with feathers

I was a bit surprised to be asked to attribute the quote.

To me it seemed about on a par with being asked to identify the author of "To be or not to be", or "This was their finest hour". These are phrases which have entered the language, and we all know where they come from.

Or do we? Maybe I'm wrong. It's not that I doubt that there are plenty of people out there who haven't heard of Emily Dickinson - but how many of them read reviews in poetry journals? It would be a bit like postulating a physics student who'd never heard of Einstein.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The image above is the only authenticated photograph of the poet, taken when she'd just turned 16. Versions of it have been colourised, redrawn, artificially aged, and generally monkeyed around with over the past century or so since the posthumous discovery of her work in 1890.

The first selection from the almost 1800 poems she left behind in manuscript, edited by the Dickinsons' neighbour Mabel Loomis Todd and well-known man of letters Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was such a success that it was quickly followed by two sequels, published in 1891 and 1896, together with a 2-volume collection of the poet's letters (1894).

Emily Dickinson: Poems (1890)

After the death of her brother Austin Dickinson (1829-1895), however, the smouldering feud between his wife Susan (1830-1913), and his lover Mabel Loomis Todd (1856-1932) came to a head. The family took back the manuscripts Emily's sister Lavinia had loaned to Todd, and no more new work appeared for another twenty years.

Far from subsiding, the feud reached new levels of intensity after 1914, via a series of competing editions of poems and letters issued by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Austin and Susan's daughter (and thus Emily's niece), and Millicent Todd Bingham, Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter, which appeared piecemeal over the next thirty years.

Millicent Todd Bingham: Ancestor’s Brocades (1945)

A vivid - if somewhat one-sided - account of all this palaver is given in Bingham's book Ancestor’s Brocades: The Literary Début of Emily Dickinson (1945). A more honest and accurate version is included in Lyndall Gordon's recent biography Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (2010).

Lyndall Gordon: Lives Like Loaded Guns (2010)

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But that's not really what interests me here. I'm less keen to talk about Dickinson herself than about "Dickinson", the 30-part TV sitcom /dramedy Bronwyn and I have just been watching on Apple TV.

I was a bit doubtful about the concept at first, but the show's weird mixture of contemporary language and attitudes with "period" clothes and mores does seem to work somehow. And one has to admit that there's a certain brutal accuracy to their skewering of such luminaries as Louisa May Alcott, Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, et al.

Also, the fact that the show strays further and further into the most abject melodrama the longer it goes on provides a perfect disguise for the fact that most of it is true. It's hard to exaggerate just how weird the Dickinsons' lifestyle really was (by all accounts, at any rate): the two separate-but-conjoined houses, the long periods when none of them were speaking to each other, the drunkenness and adultery.

Alena Smith: Dickinson (2019-21)

Nor, it appears, was Emily herself, the Belle of Amherst, quite the shrinking violet of legend. In her 2010 Guardian article "A Bomb in Her Bosom", her biographer Lyndall Gordon calls her "a woman who was fun: a lover who joked; a mystic who mocked heaven."

In Gordon's case, though, she has a ready-made villain to hand for all these misunderstandings: Dickinson's previous "definitive" biographer Richard B. Sewall, who was so much under the thumb of Mabel Loomis Todd that he:

passed on the trove of Todd untruths: that Emily Dickinson had favoured Mabel; that the poet's withdrawal into seclusion had been the result of a family split preceding Mabel's appearance ... The biographer even outdoes the Todds when he suggests that Dickinson's "failure" to publish was a result of a family quarrel.

While one should certainly take any biographer's account of the deficiencies of their predecessors with a grain of salt, there may be something to Gordon's contention that Emily and her family were far more dysfunctional than popular legend would allow:

Helpful Mr Higginson, a supporter of women, who thought he was corresponding with an apologetic, self-effacing spinster, was puzzled to find himself "drained" of "nerve-power" after his first visit to [Emily] in 1870. He was unable to describe the creature he found beyond a few surface facts: she had smooth bands of red hair and no good features; she had been deferential and exquisitely clean in her white piqué dress and blue crocheted shawl; and after an initial hesitation, she had proved surprisingly articulate. She had said a lot of strange things, from which Higginson deduced an "abnormal" life.

But was she a lesbian? Dickinson's Dickinson certainly is, and the object of her affections is, unequivocally, her brother's wife Sue.

That's not the universal verdict, though:

In a novel of 2006 a spiteful Sue ends up "hating" Emily. In a novel of 2007 Sue becomes a death-dealing Lucrezia Borgia. She awaits her victims in the hall of her house, a vamp in décolleté black velvet waving her fan. Can evil go further? It can. Sue "could make mincemeat pie of the Dickinson sisters and eat it for Christmas dinner".

I wish that Lyndall Gordon had thought to supply us with the titles of these two novels. My own quest has (so far) turned up only the following fictional outings:

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Jerome Charyn: The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (2010)

What if the old maid of Amherst wasn’t an old maid at all? Her older brother, Austin, spoke of Emily as his “wild sister.” ... The poet dons a hundred veils, alternately playing wounded lover, penitent, and female devil. We meet the significant characters of her life, including her tempestuous sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert; her brooding father, Edward; and the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who may have inspired some of her greatest letters and poems.

That somewhat risqué cover illustration seems particularly appropriate for this "astonishing novel that removes Emily Dickinson’s own mysterious mask and reveals the passions and heartbreak of America’s greatest poet."

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John J. Healey: Emily & Herman: A Literary Romance (2013)

On a whim the two distinguished authors [Hawthorne and Melville] invite the Dickinson siblings to accompany them on a trip to Boston and New York. In Manhattan they meet journalist Walt Whitman and William Johnson, a runaway slave, and it is there, despite their efforts to control it, that Emily and Herman fall in love.

Herman Melville seems to be just about the only distinguished mid-century American writer not included in Dickinson, so it's nice that Healey had already supplied the omission.

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Nuala O'Connor: Miss Emily (2015)

The Dickinson household is saved from domestic chaos with the arrival of Ada Concannon, a ‘neat little Irish person, fresh off the boat’. In Amherst in the 1800’s the homesick young maid finds in the gifted middle child, Emily, a fellow feeling. Born on the same day they share a sense of mischief and a love of baking, but Emily’s passion for words is her true vocation. When Ada’s reputation is violated Emily finds herself defending her maid against her own family and those she loves.

The Emily in Dickinson seems a bit baking-challenged, so it's nice to know that this one has at least a few domestic talents. Nuala O'Connor is a skilful and inspiring writer whom Bronwyn and I met at a short story conference in Shanghai, so I won't be saying anything critical of this particular addition to the canon of Emily-Dickinson-fiction (or EDF for short).

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You do begin to wonder at this stage, though, just what aspects of the famed recluse remain to be exploited. I mean, what's next, Emily Dickinson, super-sleuth?

Since you mention it:

Amanda Flower: The Emily Dickinson Mystery Series (2022-25)

A new historical series starring Willa Noble, maid to iconic American poet Emily Dickinson, who solves mysteries with her new employer.

In her online interview with Amanda Flower, the author of the 'Emily Dickinson Mystery Series,' Elise Cooper jumps straight in with the question on everyone's lips:

How did you get the idea to use Emily Dickinson?

Amanda Flower: Each book’s title will be the first line from one of her famous poems ... I pay tribute to the poems, but do not follow it verbatim [sic.] Her poems are imagery and vague with multiple meanings. She never wrote clearly.

No, she never did. And her poems are indeed "imagery and vague with multiple meanings."

Flower goes on to explain that Emily makes the perfect candidate for a detective because "Her poems are mysterious."

The real characters beside Emily were the maid Margaret O’ Brian. I added a maid assistant, Willa, to tell the story in the same manner that Sherlock Holmes had Watson. I also chose that period of her life, in 1855, where Emily and her sister came to Washington because her father was a member of the House of Representatives. This time was about six years before she went into hiding for the rest of her life as a recluse ...

And Emily herself?

She likes to investigate, a good judge of character, ignores societal class, and is loyal. She is also bold, caring, curious, confident, and blunt. She was probably her father’s favorite because he gave her special treatment. She enjoyed wandering around and instead of ... telling her to stop [he] bought her a dog for protection. The dog is real and so his name Carlo, a character in Jane Eyre. He lived for seventeen years, which is unusual for a pure bred Newfoundland. One of the theories is that Emily became a recluse after he passed away.

Joking apart, Flowers' series does sound like a lot of fun. And there's something rather pleasing in her conclusion that "The family gave her room to be different, a genius aspect."

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Simon Worrall: The Poet and the Murderer (2003)

When the author sets out on the trail of a forged Emily Dickinson poem that has mysteriously turned up for sale at Sotheby’s in New York, he finds himself drawn into a world of deception and murder. The trail eventually leads, via the casinos of Las Vegas, to Utah and the darkly compelling world of Mark Hofmann, ex-Mormon and one of the most daring literary forgers and remorseless murderers of all time. As the author uncovers Hofmann’s brilliant, and disturbing, career, he takes the reader into the secret world of the Mormon Church and its controversial founder, Joseph Smith.
Deeply researched but with the narrative pace of a novel, Worrall’s investigation into the life and crimes of this charismatic genius is a real-life detective story you simply won’t be able to put down. On the way, you will meet an eclectic cast of characters: undercover detectives and rare book dealers, Dickinson scholars, forensic document experts, hypnotists, gun-dealers and Mormons ...

At times one does feel just the slightest tendency towards exploitation in certain authors' attempts to shoehorn Emily Dickinson into their books willy-nilly. Mark Hofmann's decision to forge an Emily Dickinson poem doesn't, in itself, sound like the most significant aspect of the true crime mystery described above.

Still, each to their own. It certainly confirms the poet's ability to rouse strong passions: then and now.

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William Luce: The Belle of Amherst (1976)

Perhaps Emily's strongest mark to date, however, has been on the world of film and theatre. Julie Harris's award-winning performance in the long-running play "The Belle of Amherst" (broadcast live on TV in 1976 as a one-woman show), has been criticised by Lyndall Gordon for "perpetuating Mabel Loomis Todd's chaste, hermit-like image of Dickinson, as opposed to the lively, witty, provocative, and sometimes erotic Dickinson present in her work and known to those who knew her more personally."

At the time, though, at least one reviewer praised it as follows:

With her technical ability and her emotional range, Miss Harris can convey profound inner turmoil at the same time that she displays irrepressible gaiety of spirit.

Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson (1976)

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Terence Davies, dir.: A Quiet Passion (2016)

Diagnosed with “Bright’s Disease”, a kidney ailment, [Emily's] health deteriorates with back pain and grand mal seizures. Mother, long suffering from melancholy, has a stroke and passes. Subsequently, Emily discovers that Austin is having an affair with a singer (Mrs Todd). Emily, with sympathy for Susan, confronts her brother’s hypocrisy. With the strains growing, Vinnie points out to Emily her own intolerance of the failings of others.
Emily’s condition deteriorates. She dies with Austin and Vinnie visibly distraught by her side.

- Wikipedia: A Quiet Passion

And so it goes, I guess: Life's a bitch and then you die.

Students of Terence Davies' work have been conditioned to respond favourably to his subtle, understated style. On the other hand, it can be criticised - especially latterly, in this and his follow-up film Benediction, about war poet Siegfried Sassoon - for, at times, taking understatement to the point of indirection.

Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson (2016)

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Madeleine Olnek, dir.: Wild Nights with Emily (2018)

The same could not be said of Madeleine Olnek's Wild Nights with Emily. As its star, Molly Shannon, explained to Entertainment Weekly:

"She’s perceived as a spinster recluse who wanted her poems burned upon death ... That story was fabricated ... She was a lively woman who 100 percent wanted to be published and went up against big men at the head of literary journals, [while] she had a love life — with her brother’s wife ..."
Shannon referenced a 1998 New York Times article, which thanks to infrared light technology, was able to report that Susan's name had been erased from over 10 of Dickinson's writings. The actress seems overjoyed that this new movie will show Dickinson's love for Susan, as well as what Shannon believes was the poet's real personality: that of a woman "full of lust and passion."
"I don’t want to say she was 'dirty,' but she was a very passionate, hungry, deep, insightful, tuned in, expressive lover!"

Dirty - quiet - cheerful ... "Nature abhors a vaccuum" is a saying as old as the hills. Any attempts that Emily Dickinson may (or may not) have made to erase herself during her lifetime appear to have backfired with a vengeance.

Right now she seems to be pretty much "any type of dancer they wanted her to be," to quote (yet again) from my all-time favourite movie about the writing trade, Wonder Boys.

Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson (2018)

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Gage Skidmore: Hailee Steinfeld (2018)

For myself, I find it a bit difficult to get past Hailee Steinfeld's star turn as Emily. Talk about mercurial moods and passions! This Emily gets to do - and say - it all. She's about as shy and retiring as Lady Gaga. And yet her melancholic turns make perfect dramatic sense as well.

For anyone who thought that her bravura performance in True Grit marked the apogee of her talent: think again. If the real Emily wasn't like this, she definitely should have been.

Darren Star: Emily in Paris (2020- )

Emily in Paris, eat your heart out! Steinfeld's Emily in Amherst is not only a better writer than Lily Collins' fish-out-of-water in la ville lumière, she's also a snappier dresser. Who else could rock those mid-nineteenth-century frocks like she does? Even Death agrees, and he's a pretty stern critic ...

Dickinson: Hailee Steinfeld & Wiz Khalifa as 'Death'

True, there may be a certain disconnect with the "creature" encountered by Thomas Higginson on his 1870 visit: the one with "smooth bands of red hair and no good features", but Hailee Steinfeld does her level best to dress down at least some of the time.

What matters is that this Emily is splendidly alive - and sassy. "She had said a lot of strange things, from which Higginson deduced an 'abnormal' life". But what he saw as abnormal we might feel inclined to see as living her best life.

Amherst College: Emily Dickinson & Kate Scott Turner (c.1859)
[unauthenticated]

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Emily Dickinson Commemorative Stamp (1971)

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
(1830-1886)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Thomas H. Johnson, ed.: The Poems of Emily Dickinson (3 vols, 1955)


Poetry:


1. A Valentine [“‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’”]. Springfield Daily Republican (February 20, 1852)
2. To Mrs -, with a Rose ["Nobody knows this little rose -”]. Springfield Daily Republican (August 2, 1858)
3. The May-Wine [“I taste a liquor never brewed - ”]. Springfield Daily Republican (May 4, 1861)
4. The Sleeping [“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers – ”]. Springfield Daily Republican (March 1, 1862)
5. Sunset [“Blazing in Gold, and quenching in Purple” ]. Drum Beat (February 29, 1864)
6. Flowers [“Flowers - Well - if anybody”]. Drum Beat (March 2, 1864)
7. October [“These are the days when Birds come back -”]. Drum Beat (March 11, 1864)
8. My Sabbath [“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church - ”]. Round Table (March 12, 1864)
9. Success is counted sweetest. Brooklyn Daily Union (April 27, 1864)
10. The Snake ["A narrow Fellow in the Grass”]. Springfield Daily Republican (February 14, 1866)
11. Success is counted sweetest. A Masque of Poets (1878)
12. Poems. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd & Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1890)
13. Poems: Second Series. Ed. Thomas Wentworth Higginson & Mabel Loomis Todd (1891)
14. Poems: Third Series. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd (1896)
15. The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime. Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1914)
16. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1924)
17. Further Poems of Emily Dickinson. Withheld from Publication by Her Sister Lavinia. Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi & Alfred Leete Hampson (1929)
18. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi & Alfred Leete Hampson (1930)
19. Unpublished Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi & Alfred Leete Hampson (1935)
20. Bolts of Melody. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd & Millicent Todd Bingham (1945)
21. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Including Variant Readings Critically Compared with All Known Manuscripts. 3 vols. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson (1955)
    • The Complete Poems. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. 1955. London: Faber, 1975.
22. Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems & Letters. Ed. Robert N. Linscott (1959)
    • Selected Poems & Letters. Together with Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Account of His Correspondence with the Poet and His Visit to Her in Amherst. Ed. Robert N. Linscott. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959.
23. A Choice of Emily Dickinson's Verse. Ed. Ted Hughes (1968)
    • A Choice of Emily Dickinson's Verse. Ed. Ted Hughes. 1968. London: Faber, 1970.
24. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson: A Facsimile Edition. 2 vols. Ed. R. W. Franklin (1981)
25. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. 3 vols. Ed. R. W. Franklin (1998)
    • The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition. 3 vols. Ed. R. W. Franklin. Cambridge, Mass & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.
26. Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings. Ed. Jen Bervin & Marta Werner (2013)
    • The Gorgeous Nothings. Ed. Jen Bervin & Marta Werner. Preface by Susan Howe. New York: New Directions / Christine Burgin, in association with Granary Books, 2013.
27. Envelope Poems. Ed. Jen Bervin & Marta Werner (2016)
    • Envelope Poems. Ed. Jen Bervin & Marta Werner. New York: New Directions / Christine Burgin, 2016.
28. Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them. Ed. Cristanne Miller (2016)
    • Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Ed. Cristanne Miller. Belknap Press. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 2016.



Thomas H. Johnson & Theodora Ward, ed.: The Letters of Emily Dickinson (3 vols, 1958)


Letters:


29. A Valentine ["Magnum bonum, harem scarum”]. Amherst College Indicator (February, 1850)
30. Letters of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd (1894)
31. Bianchi, Martha Dickinson. The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924)
32. Letters of Emily Dickinson: New and Enlarged Edition. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd (1931)
33. Bianchi, Martha Dickinson. Emily Dickinson: Face to Face. Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminiscence (1932)
34. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. 3 vols. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson & Theodora Ward (1958)
    • Johnson, Thomas H., ed. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Associate Editor, Theodora Ward. 3 vols. 1958. Cambridge, Mass & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979.
35. Open me carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Ed. Ellen Louise Hart & Martha Nell Smith (1998)
36. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Cristanne Miller & Domhnall Mitchell (2024)



Jay Leyda, ed.: The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson (2 vols, 1960)


Secondary:


37. Bingham, Millicent Todd. Ancestor’s Brocades. The Literary Début of Emily Dickinson (1945)
    • Ancestor’s Brocades. The Literary Discovery of Emily Dickinson: The Editing and Publication of Her Letters and Poems. 1945. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967.
38. Whicher, George. This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (1952)
39. Bingham, Millicent Todd. Emily Dickinson: A Revelation (1954)
40. Bingham, Millicent Todd. Emily Dickinson’s Home: Letters of Edward Dickinson and Family. (1955)
    • Emily Dickinson’s Home: The Early Years, as Revealed in Family Correspondence and Reminiscences. With Documentation and Comment. 1955. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967.
41. Johnson, Thomas H. Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography (1955)
    • Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography. 1955. New York: Atheneum, 1980.
42. Leyda, Jay. The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols (1960)
43. Sewall, Richard B. The Life of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols (1974)
44. Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (2001)
45. Gordon, Lyndall. Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (2010)
    • Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. 2010. Virago Press. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2010.

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Susan Howe: My Emily Dickinson (1985)

There are, of course, many other sub-branches of Dickinsoniana: poetry selections (illustrated and unillustrated), facsimile editions, critical interpretations by the yard. One rather interesting aspect of this is her tendency to inspire children's picture books.

Here are a few examples:

Michael Bedard: Emily. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney (1992)

"What if your neighbor were the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson? And what if one day she sent a letter inviting your mother to pay her a visit? A little girl who lives across the street from the mysterious Emily gets a chance to meet the poet when her mother goes to play the piano for her. There, the girl sneaks a gift up to Emily, who listens from the landing, and in return, Emily gives the girl a precious gift of her own — the gift of poetry."

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Eileen Spinelli: Another Day as Emily. Illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff (2015)

"Eleven-year-old Suzy just can't win. Her brother is a local hero for calling 911 after seeing their elderly neighbor collapse, and only her best friend was able to win a role in the play they both auditioned for. Feeling cast aside from all angles, Suzy sees a kindred spirit in Emily Dickinson, the subject of her summer project. Suzy decides to escape from her disappointments by emulating the poet's life of solitude: no visitors or phone calls (only letters delivered through her window), no friends (except her goldfish, Ottilie), and no outings (except church, but only if she can wear her long white Emily dress)."

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Kate Coombs: In Emily's Garden. Illustrated by Carme Lemniscates (2019)

"Avid gardener and poet Emily Dickinson collected 424 pressed flower specimens and wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, with nature and plants inspiring many of her beloved works. Lines and couplets from Dickinson’s poems paired with Carme Lemniscates’ gorgeous illustrations bring In Emily’s Garden to life, letting toddlers take a stroll in Emily’s garden of verses. See the flowers, birds, butterflies, and bees through Emily’s eyes, and foster a love of gardens and poems alike."

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Jane Yolen: Emily Writes. Illustrated by Christine Davenier (2020)

"As a young girl, Emily Dickinson loved to scribble curlicues and circles, imagine new rhymes, and connect with the natural world around her. The sounds, sights, and smells of home swirled through her mind, and Emily began to explore writing and rhyming her thoughts and impressions. She thinks about the real and the unreal. Perhaps poems are the in-between."

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Jennifer Berne: On Wings of Words. Illustrated by Becca Stadtlander (2020)

"In a small New England town lives Emily Dickinson, a girl in love with small things — a flower petal, a bird, a ray of light, a word. In those small things, her brilliant imagination can see the wide world — and in her words, she takes wing. From celebrated children's author Jennifer Berne comes a lyrical and lovely account of the life of Emily Dickinson: her courage, her faith, and her gift to the world. With Dickinson's own inimitable poetry woven throughout, this lyrical biography is not just a tale of prodigious talent, but also of the power we have to transform ourselves and to reach one another when we speak from the soul."

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Krystyna Poray Goddu: Becoming Emily (2022)

"In Becoming Emily, young readers will learn how as a child, adolescent, and well into adulthood, Dickinson was a lively social being with a warm family life. Highly educated for a girl of her era, she was fully engaged in both the academic and social aspects of the schools she attended until she was nearly 18. Her family and friends were of the utmost importance to her, and she was a prolific, thoughtful, and witty correspondent who shared many poems with those closest to her. Including plentiful photos, full-length poems, letter excerpts, a time line, source notes, and a bibliography, this indispensable resource offers a full portrait of this singular American poet."

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Lydia Corry: Wildflower Emily (2024)

"Follow along as we delve into Emily Dickinson’s childhood, revealing a young girl desperate to go out exploring―to meet the flowers in their own homes. Wade through tall grasses to gather butterfly weed and goldenrod, the air alive with the 'buccaneers of buzz.' And, don’t forget to keep a hot potato in your pocket to keep your fingers warm.
This is Emily Dickinson as you’ve never seen her before, embarking on an unforgettable journey in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, with her trusty four-legged companion, Carlo."

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Other Worlds: An Exhibition

(Auckland Central Library: 19/2-2/8/25)

Frederick Pohl: The Way the Future Was (1979)

The Way the Future Was. Ever since I first came across it, I've felt that the title of Frederick Pohl's mid-career memoir summed up the field of Science Fiction pretty exactly.

For all its emphasis on futuristic prediction and the pending triumphs of technology, SF (whether you read that acronym as "Science Fiction" or the more inclusive "Speculative Fiction") has always been an intensely nostalgic genre.

Other Worlds, curated by Andrew Henry & Renee Orr (19 February - 2 August 2025)

You feel it the moment you walk in the door of Other Worlds, the latest exhibition in the Rare Books Room at Auckland's Central City Library, an exploration of the "imaginative worlds of science fiction ... featuring books, magazines, comics and posters from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections."

Simon Tate: Auckland Council Libraries (2025)

The curators' decision to focus on old SF magazine covers to create an immediate visual effect was an inspired one. The exuberance and inventiveness of the artists who illustrated these old pulp magazines was propelled not so much by aesthetic considerations as by the sheer strength of the competition.

They had to stand out against all the other possibilities on the newstand: the toney, uptown slicks; the plethora of True Crime and True Detective titles; and even the last few remaining shockers: the EC horror comics or Weird Tales - almost all of them equally attractive (or garish, depending on your taste).

Frank Herbert: The Prophet of Dune (1965)

And yet, look at this cover from the original run of Dune in Analog in the early 1960s. Has there ever been a more majestic rendition of a Sandworm in any of the subsequent book-covers or movies?

"Shai Hulud!" I found myself intoning as I saw it, "Bless the Maker and His water. May His passage cleanse the world." I am, as you may have gathered, an abject fan of the grandeur of Frank Herbert's conception, ever since I first read it more years ago than I care to mention ...

Fritz Lang, dir. Metropolis, music by Giorgio Moroder (1924 / 1984)

That's not all you see when you first go in, though. In accordance with that sense of nostalgia I mentioned above, there was an old flickering black-and-white movie being projected on the back wall: possibly the greatest SF movie ever made - certainly among the most influential - Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

It's a masterpiece no matter which version you watch it in (there are many - of varying lengths and degrees of completeness). It's probably a relic of having come of age in the 1980s, but I still can't get past the experience of first seeing it in full in the 1984 version scored by Giorgio Moroder.

Moroder colourised the scenes, which might sound sacrilegious if you didn't realise that that was how feature films were generally projected in the 1920s - just like those classical marble nudes we admire so much which were originally covered in brightly coloured paint by their creators.

Check it out for yourself at the youtube link above.

Simon Tate: Auckland Council Libraries (2025)

Which brings me to my next point. What exactly are we intended to take away from this assemblage of artefacts? Once you've got over the security blanket feeling of seeing so many old friends among the books displayed in the vitrines - Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - you begin to wonder about the rationale behind them.

Of course the standard themes are gestured towards: Robots and Monsters, Inner Worlds, the planet Mars ... these are a few of the labels included in the exhibition brochure. And, yes, artificial life and artificial intelligence are now subjects which impact on us everyday, as do the consequences of ignoring the ecological warnings of earlier SF.

“It’s a celebration of the imagination of writers and artists – of imaginative literature,” says Andrew Henry, Curator of Auckland Collections, Auckland Council Libraries.

“There’s a huge variety of other worlds that these writers have created, from outer space to cyberspace. We want to invite Aucklanders to come and check out science fiction’s early beginnings and how it’s progressed since then; to consider how this might be topical in the modern day and what some of the wildest predictions of technology have been – did they get it right? Come find out!”

Quite so. But in keeping with that invitation, I guess what excited me most about the show were the few, subversive signs it contained of a new lease of life for this now venerable genre.

Gina Cole: Na Viro (2022)

It's not actually included in any of the vitrines, but I see that local author Gina Cole has been asked to come and speak about her work at one of the public programmes associated with the exhibition. When I first read her novel Na Viro a few years ago, I was hugely impressed by the skill with which it integrated both colonial and dystopian themes into a new construct she referred to as "Pasifikafuturism."

Gina Cole

Building on her earlier collection Black Ice Matter (2017), Cole has expertly transposed some of the ideas behind the embattled concept of Afrofuturism to a Pacific context.

But it's the inclusion of works by Octavia Butler and that supreme maverick Samuel R. Delany in the cabinet marked "Colonisation" that gives us a possible lead towards seeing how these themes ought to stand front and centre in any consideration of the meaning of SF in Aotearoa now.

Samuel Delany & Octavia Butler (1998)

While neither of these authors felt exactly comfortable about the possible limiting implications of the term, there's no doubt that present-day Afrofuturism - and its offshoot, Africanfuturism - owe a great debt to their pioneering work in the SF genre. Nor did they shy away from controversy or cultural politics: the lifeblood of any engaged artform.

I'd like to see what's included here, then, as not so much a nostalgia-fest as a blueprint for further progress. Where do we go from here? For Gina Cole, that has meant conceiving of travel through space as the same leap into the unknown her ancestors undertook in setting out across the moana.

Or, as T. S. Eliot once said:

... the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.

- "The Dry Salvages." Four Quartets (1941)

Geoff Murphy, dir. The Quiet Earth (1985)

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For those interested in pursuing this topic, there are a number of sites you might like to check out:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

  notable for its excellent essays on SF themes, as well as its individual author studies

• The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

  again, an indispensable source of information on the genre

• ISFDB: The Internet Speculative Fiction Database

  a constantly growing repository of mostly bibliographical information on the field

• NZSF: Essays on New Zealand Speculative Fiction

  a website containing most of my own essays on the local product, from Samuel Butler to the present day

• SFFANZ: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand

  an invaluable resource for those wanting to explore the history of SF in New Zealand, as well as the latest developments in the field

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Other Worlds, curated by Andrew Henry & Renee Orr (2025)
[Mike Hinge: Analog cover design (1967)]