Classic Ghost Story Writers: Edward Lucas White

Edward Lucas White: Lukundoo (1927)

I think that the first time I encountered one of Edward Lucas White's stories was in Bryan Netherwood's aptly named collection Terror! An Anthology of Blood-curdling Stories. The story in question was 'Amina,' and there was a matter-of-fact simplicity about it which made a deep impression on me.

To be sure, it concerns a ghoul, but she is certainly the most realistic - and, indeed, most sympathetic - bloodsucker I'd ever met. Her simple remark, 'We shall have to drink shortly, but it will be warm,' still haunts me to this day.

Bryan Netherwood, ed.: Terror! An Anthology of Blood-curdling Stories (1970)

Next came the title story in Kathleen Lines' The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales. I spent a good deal of my time as a kid reading such anthologies, most of the time coming across the same old chestnuts: H. G. Wells' 'The Red Room,' Rudyard Kipling's ' The Mark of the Beast,' Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lot no. 249' ...

Every now and then, though, I'd find something new and exciting. There was something quite strange and original about this E. L. White's fiction - something that made it stand out from the otherwise fairly predictable ruck of Edwardian spine-chillers.

It was an experience of the same order - though certainly not of the same kind - as my first reading of H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Dunwich Horror.' I'd already read 'The Colour out of Space' (Lovecraft's personal favourite among all of his stories). That was still roughly assimilable to my own general sense of the outlines of the 'weird story, though - 'The Dunwich Horror,' and the various vicissitudes of Wilbur Whateley and his sinister kinfolk, came from another universe entirely.

Kathleen Lines, ed. The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales (1967)

Last (but not least) I read 'Lukundoo' itself in one of the greatest of all short story anthologies, Dorothy L. Sayers' 3-part Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928-34 / reprinted in 6 volumes in 1950-51).

Dorothy L. Sayers, ed. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928 / 1951)

'Lukundoo' was a trip, all right. I still have nightmares about that razor. But, of course, that was really the point. I'd gathered from carefully poring over the bio-notes in each of the collections above that White's fiction was - or at least purported to be - a simple transcript of his dreams.

Edward Lucas White (1866-1934)

He'd apparently had an illness during which his nightmares became particularly vivid and unpleasant, and had tried to exorcise the effect of these haunting images by writing them down as 'short stories.'

Looking at the blurb to the first edition, below, one gets the impression that this must have come as a bit of a nasty shock to his regular publishers, as well as what they refer to optimistically as 'his army of readers,' who were presumably expecting another historical novel in his more customary style:

Lukundoo: blurb (1927)

Mr. White, best known as the author of the memorable EL SUPREMO, here shows himself master of quite another style.
Tales of mystery and horror compose the greater part of the present volume - tales that prickle the skin and curdle the blood - tales that are told with that fine art of the thriller which, opening on a subtle note of suspense, develops surely and fearfully until the heart is brought pounding to the throat and the dénouement is reached with a sense of pure relief.
Whatever the personal preferences of Mr. White's army of readers, they will find him as expert a story-teller in the realm of the weird and the fantastic as ever they found him in that of the historical novel wherein his reputation has been so firmly established.

Certainly the 'personal preferences' of the blurb writer do not seem to extend as far as the actual enjoyment of these heart-pounding dénouements, reached in each case (it would appear) 'with a sense of pure relief.'

In any case, he did not offend in the same way again. His only subsequent publications were a history book, Why Rome Fell (1927), and a memoir attesting to the happiness of his marriage, Matrimony (1932):

On March 30, 1934, seven years to the day after the death of his wife Agnes Gerry, he committed suicide by gas inhalation in the bathroom of his Baltimore home.

- Wikipedia

It's hard to convey to young readers today the sheer difference between exploring such byways of weird fiction in the 1970s and the comparative ease of doing so now, more than forty years later. The book Lukundoo was unobtainable to me. It wasn't in any of the libraries I frequented, or even had access to via interloan. In fact, it wasn't until I went to the UK to study in the mid-1980s that I began to be able to read such things.

Edinburgh, where I was studying, was the proud possessor of a copyright library. There are six of these in Britain:

In the United Kingdom, the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 restates the Copyright Act 1911, that one copy of every book published there must be sent to the national library (the British Library); five other libraries (the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Trinity College Library, Dublin, and the National Library of Wales) are entitled to request a free copy within one year of publication.

- Wikipedia

This did not mean that the National Library of Scotland had everything contained in the British Library, but it did mean that there was a reasonably good chance of having access to most things you could think of through its stacks.

And, yes, it did have a copy of Lukundoo. Which I duly read, perched uncomfortably in the reading room there, possibly the least congenial place imaginable to pore over so strange and atmospheric a work.

Lukundoo (1927)

Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927):
contents:

1. Lukundoo
2. Floki's Blade
3. The Picture Puzzle
4. The Snout
5. Alfandega 49a
6. The Message on the Slate
7. Amina
8. The Pig-Skin Belt
9. The House of the Nightmare
10. Sorcery Island

Possibly for that reason, it came as a sore disappointment to me. None of the other stories, 'weird' though they undoubtedly were, seemed to come up to the standard of the three I'd read already. They seemed too arbitrarily 'dream-like', lacking the circumstantial solidity of (especially) 'Amina' and 'Lukundoo.'

S. T. Joshi, ed.: The Stuff of Dreams: The Weird Stories of Edward Lucas White (2016)

The other day, whilst pursuing my strange quest to acquire everything substantive by (or about) H. P. Lovecraft - for more on this, see my posts here and here - I stumbled across the volume above.

So great had been my disappointment on finally getting to read White's book, that it had never really occurred to me to research him since. Now, though, for a very reasonable cost, it seemed possible to obtain most of the stories in Lukundoo together with some of the posthumous material published since.

S. T. Joshi, ed.: The Stuff of Dreams: contents (2016)

Mind you, if I'd waited a bit longer, I might have been tempted to go as far as the book below, described on its cover as containing 'Four Novelettes: "The Snout," "The Message on the Slate," "The Song of the Sirens," & "The Fasces," Nineteen Short Stories & Two Poems of the Strange and Unusual':

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Edward Lucas White (2017)

That might, however, have been a step too far. In any case, I note from the Wikipedia article on him that:

During 1885 White began a utopian science fiction novel, Plus Ultra. He destroyed the first draft and started over in 1901, then worked on it for most of the rest of his life. The resulting monumental work — estimated by one critic [S. T. Joshi] at 500,000 words — remains unpublished, although a portion of it was released separately in 1920 as the novella From Behind the Stars.

This fascinating sounding work must therefore have been begun by White before the appearance of Edward Bellamy's classic Looking Backward (1888), and written over roughly the same period as Austin Tappan Wright's similarly immense Islandia (1941), which I've previously written about here.

•

That was the before. Here is the after. I've now received (and read) Joshi's selection of Edward Lucas White's 'weird stories', and I'm sorry to report that most of the 'extra' stories in it suffer from the excessive padding so typical of the period, and yet so conspicuously lacking in the three described above. It's almost, in fact, as if they were written by another author altogether ...

There remains, in any case, 'Lukundoo' itself. According to the blurb of the horribly garish version below:

One of Alfred Hitchcock's favorite tales, he lamented that it was a story "they wouldn't let him do on TV."

In case even that isn't alluring enough, they add helpfully: 'This is a book that goes to the heart of darkness - and beyond.'

Edward Lucas White: Lukundoo (1927)

Classic Ghost Story Writers: Arthur Conan Doyle

The Conan Doyle Stories (1929)

Towards the end of his life, the vogue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was still such that it made good commercial sense to collect his works in convenient omnibus form. First of all (of course) came Sherlock Holmes, with one volume (1928) for the five volumes of short stories and another (1929) for the four novels.

Next came the collected short stories (1929), then two volumes of 'historical romances' (1931 & 1932). Long after that, in the 1950s, came the Professor Challenger stories (The Lost World and its successors) and even an omnibus of Napoleonic Stories (though the latter overlaps considerably with the second volume of historical romances) - seven books in all, then, containing 16 novels and at least 11 volumes of short stories.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Sherlock Holmes Short Stories (1928)

Sherlock Holmes was a rationalist, concerned only with what could be scientifically proven and deduced from the evidence. His creator was anything but. I've written elsewhere (here and here) about Charles Sturridge's wonderful film Fairy Tale (1997), which retells the strange story of the Cottingley Fairies.

Peter O'Toole as Conan Doyle (1997)

Peter O'Toole does an excellent job of impersonating the distinctly credulous but still (paradoxically) occasionally astute Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It becomes clear in the course of the action that it was the loss of his son Kingsley in the First World War - he died of influenza caught at the front two weeks before the armistice - that compels Doyle to continue his quest for communication beyond the veil.

This monstrous pall of loss hanging over the whole western world does explain, to some extent, the post-war growth of interest in spiritualism. The hitherto widely respected physicist Sir Oliver Lodge's book Raymond, or Life and Death (1916), about the séances he held to contact his own dead son, had an immense influence over other grieving parents, and Doyle gradually became their spokesman and standard-bearer.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Land of Mist (1925-26)

Even the hard-headed Professor Challenger, the dinosaur hunter of The Lost World (1912), was pressed into service as a psychic investigator in Doyle's late novel The Land of Mist (1926). Sherlock Holmes must be said to have had a narrow escape in not being conscripted similarly - even in The Hound of Baskervilles, where all the spectral appearances turn out to have a distinctly rational explanation.

Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Story of the Brown Hand" (1899)

It's not really those stories I want to discuss here, though. It's the ones collected in those two sections of The Conan Doyle Stories entitled "Tales of Terror & Mystery" and "Tales of Twilight & the Unseen." These include such frequently anthologised classics as "The Brown Hand" and "The Brazilian Cat."

Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Story of the Brazilian Cat" (1898)

A great many of the others are equally memorable, though. For the most part they predate the period of his full-fledged involvement with Spiritualism, but it was already plain that he already had a strong affinity with the supernatural and mystical. Two stories that made a particular impression on me when I first read them as a boy were "The Terror of Blue John Gap" and "The Leather Funnel."

Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Terror of Blue John Gap" (1910)

The first of these is somewhat reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft's early story "The Beast in the Cave," written in 1904 (though not published until 1918). The fourteen-year-old Lovecraft could certainly not yet match the storytelling prowess of the immensely experienced Conan Doyle, but a comparison of the stories does offer some interesting reflections on what two different writers can do with not dissimilar material.

Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Leather Funnel" (1902)

"The Leather Funnel," by contrast, with its interest in psychometry and the sadistic excesses of the Inquisition, has an atmosphere of sadistic sexuality quite alien to Lovecraft but clearly quite attractive to Doyle.

[NB: It's worth stressing here the availability of these and other works by Doyle on the wonderfully comprehensive Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia website. You can find there both the texts and contemporary illustrations for all of the stories mentioned in this post.]

Arthur Conan Doyle: "Lot No. 249" (1892)

What else? There's a wonderfully vivid Egyptian-mummy-coming-to-life story in "Lot No. 249" - which predates by a decade Bram Stoker's classic Jewel of Seven Stars (1903). Nor did Doyle avoid conventional 'occultism' in his earlier stories. There's also a striking account of a séance going terribly wrong in "Playing with Fire," and a nice piece of automatic writing in "How It Happened" (1913).

Sidney Paget: Illustration for "Playing with Fire" (1900)

Need I go on? Doyle is, I think, at his best as a ghost story writer when he can combine aspects of his fascination with historical detail with nasty doings in the present. This is certainly the case in "The Leather Funnel," and also in "The New Catacomb" (1898), a neat variation on Poe's "Cask of Amontillado."

Not all of his work in this genre is included in the 1200 pages of The Conan Doyle Stories, however. A useful round-up of his unknown and uncollected pieces is provided by the late Richard Lancelyn Green's excellent The Unknown Conan Doyle: Uncollected Stories.

Uncollected Stories. Ed. John Michael Gibson & Richard Lancelyn Green (1982)

If it's Doyle's occultism that really interests you, though, you could do worse than try to find the recent (2013) Hesperus Press volume On the Unexplained, a selection from his late collection The Edge of the Unknown.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Edge of the Unknown (1930)

•


Arthur Conan Doyle (1914)

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
(1859-1930)

Fiction:


1. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Long Stories. 1929. London: John Murray, 1949.
   1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
   2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
   3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
   4. The Valley of Fear (1915)


2. The Conan Doyle Historical Romances. Volume 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1931.
   1. Micah Clarke (1889)
   2. The White Company (1891)
   3. The Refugees (1893)
   4. Sir Nigel (1906)


3. The Mystery of Cloomber (1889)


4. The Firm of Girdlestone (1890)


5. Mysteries and Adventures (1890) [short stories]


6. The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales. 1890. London & New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1893. [short stories]


7. The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891)


8. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. 1928. London: John Murray, 1949.
   1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
   2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
   3. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
   4. His Last Bow (1917)
   5. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)


9. The Complete Napoleonic Stories. London: John Murray, 1956.
   1. The Great Shadow (1892)
   2. The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896)
   3. Uncle Bernac (1897)
   4. The Adventures of Gerard (1903)


10. The Gully of Bluemansdyke (1893) [short stories]


11. The Parasite (1894)


12. Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life (1894) [short stories]


13. The Stark Munro Letters (1895)


14. The Conan Doyle Historical Romances. Volume 2 of 2. London: John Murray, 1932.
    1. The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896)
    2. Rodney Stone (1896)
    3. Uncle Bernac (1897)
    4. The Adventures of Gerard (1903)


15. The Original Illustrated Arthur Conan Doyle. Castle Books. Secausus, New Jersey: Book Sales, Inc., 1980.
    1. The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898)


16. A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus (1899)


17. The Green Flag and Other Stories of War and Sport (1900) [short stories]


18. Round the Fire Stories (1908) [short stories]


19. The Last Galley (1911) [short stories]


20. The Complete Professor Challenger Stories. 1952. London: John Murray, 1963.
    1. The Lost World (1912)
    2. The Poison Belt (1913)
    3. The Land of Mist (1926)
    4. "The Disintegration Machine" (1928)
    5. "When the World Screamed" (1929)


21. Danger! and Other Stories (1918) [short stories]


22. Three of Them (1923) [short stories]


23. The Conan Doyle Stories. 1929. London: John Murray, 1951.
    1. Tales of the Ring & the Camp
    2. Tales of Pirates & Blue Water
    3. Tales of Terror & Mystery
    4. Tales of Twilight & the Unseen
    5. Tales of Adventure & Medical Life
    6. Tales of Long Ago


24. The Maracot Deep. 1929. London: John Murray, 1961.


25. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-Six Short Stories Complete, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ed. William S. Baring-Gould. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967.


26. The Unknown Conan Doyle: Uncollected Stories. Ed. John Michael Gibson and Richard Lancelyn Green. 1982. London: Secker & Warburg, 1983.


27. The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Richard Lancelyn Green. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.


28. A Study in Scarlet: Based on the Story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery. 1887. Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited. 1983. London: Peerage Books, 1985.


29. The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ed. Richard Lancelyn Green. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.


30. The Original Illustrated 'Strand' Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Facsimile Edition. 1989. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1990.


31. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Vol. 1: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes & The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2005.


32. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Vol. 2: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow & The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2005.


33. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Vol. 3: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles & The Valley of Fear. Ed. Leslie S. Klinger. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2006.


Poetry:


34. Songs of Action (1898)


35. Songs of the Road (1911)


36. The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems (1919)


37. The Poems: Collected Edition. 1922. London: John Murray, 1928.


Non-fiction:


38. The Great Boer War (1900)


39. The War in South Africa – Its Cause and Conduct (1902)


40. Through the Magic Door (1907)


41. The Crime of the Congo (1909)


42. The Case of Oscar Slater (1912)


43. The German War: Some Sidelights and Reflections (1914)


44. A Visit to Three Fronts (1916)


45. The British Campaign in France and Flanders. 6 vols (1916–20)


46. Memories and Adventures (1924)


47. Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure (2012)


Spiritualism:


48. The New Revelation (1918)


49. A Full Report of a Lecture on Spiritualism Delivered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the Connaught Hall, Worthing on Friday July 11th 1919 (1919)


50. The Vital Message (1919)


51. Our reply to the Cleric: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lecture in Leicester, October 19th 1919 (1920)


52. Spiritualism and Rationalism (1920)


53. Verbatim Report of a Public Debate on 'The Truth of Spiritualism' between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe (1920)


54. The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (1921)


55. The Coming of the Fairies (1922)


56. The Case for Spirit Photography (1922)


57. Our American Adventure (1923)


58. Our Second American Adventure (1924)


59. The Spiritualist's Reader (1924)


60. The Early Christian Church and Modern Spiritualism (1925)


61. Psychic Experiences (1925)


62. The History of Spiritualism (1926)


63. Pheneas Speaks (1927)


64. A Word of Warning (1928)


65. What Does Spiritualism Actually Teach and Stand For? (1928)


66. The Roman Catholic Church: A Rejoinder (1929)


67. An Open Letter to Those of My Generation (1929)


68. Our African Winter (1929)


69. The Edge of the Unknown (1930)
    • On the Unexplained. London: Hesperus Press Limited, 2013.


70. The New Revelation (1997)


Secondary:


71. Baker, Michael. The Doyle Diary: The Last Great Conan Doyle Mystery. With a Holmesian Investigation into the Strange and Curious Case of Charles Altamont Doyle. London: Book Club Associates, 1978.


72. Baring-Gould, William S. Sherlock Holmes: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective. 1962. London: Panther, 1975.


73. Carr, John Dickson. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 1949. London: Pan Books, 1953.


74. Edwards, Owen Dudley. The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.


75. Meyer, Nicholas. The Seven Per Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.. 1974. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975.


76. Nordon, Pierre. Conan Doyle. 1964. Trans. Frances Partridge. London: John Murray, 1966.


77. Pearson, Hesketh. Conan Doyle: His Life and Art. 1943. Guild Books, 224. London: The British Publishers Guild, 1946.


78. Starrett, Vincent. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 1960. Introduction by Michael Murphy. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1975.


79. Tracy, Jack. The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana or, A Universal Dictionary of the State of Knowledge of Sherlock Holmes and His Biographer, John H. Watson, M.D. 1977. New York: Avon, 1979.

Leslie S. Klinger, ed. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (3 vols: 2005-6)

Bedside Books

[Bedside Books]

Bronwyn calls it the dipping shelf. It's the one where you keep books you think might continue to be entertaining even though you've already read them - perhaps more than once. It's also the place for encyclopedias, compendiums of recondite information, your favourite poets ...

As you'll see from the picture above, mine does seem to have got a bit out of hand.

It's rather a funny story, actually. It was during one of our periodic inorganic collections. I was cruising down Hastings Rd, keeping one eye open for bookshelves (you never know when you mightn't see the perfect set of shelves, all wood, being thrown out by some retiree or itinerant yuppie - you don't want to wait till after the first rainstorm, though). And there it was!

Not wood, admittedly. Or even really a bookcase. It's actually some kind of corner unit from a kitchen, I suspect - but it did have shelves, and it looked as if it might just squeeze into one corner of the bedroom. "It's not coming with us when we move," said Bronwyn, but - with that proviso - she did allow me to install this ugly piece of tat next to my side of the bed.

Just as well, really. It was a devil to squeeze the thing into the car, and I wasn't exactly relishing having to drive back and dump it where it came from in the first place.

[Shelf 1]

This is the 300th post on my blog. I put up my first entry on June 14, 2006, and now, six years later, I've finally reached 300. That's only an average of 50 a year, admittedly, but some of them are quite sizeable. There are certainly hundred of thousands of words here, indexed as best I can in the sidebar opposite.

So what to write about? I certainly don't intend to confine myself to posts about - or vaguely linked to - my book collection (indexed at A Gentle Madness) for the rest of time, but it has been quite a nice way of acknowledging debts to my favourite authors and books.

It did seem to make sense, then, to talk about the books most immediately to hand: the dipping shelf, your last refuge when you've done with the latest crop of library books and all the other books-in-progress have been finished or abandoned ...

1. Ritsema, Rudolf, & Stephen Karcher, trans. I-Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change. The First Complete Translation with Concordance. 1994. Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books Ltd., 1995.


2. The Holy Qur-ān: English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary. Ed. Mushaf Al-Madinah An-Nabawiyah. Trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali et al. Saudi Arabia: King Fahd Holy Qur-ān Printing Complex, A.H. 1411 [= 1991].


3. Ash, Russell, & Brian Lake. Bizarre Books. London: Macmillan, 1985.


4. Cavafy, C. P. Collected Poems. Trans. Daniel Mendelsohn. 2009. A Borzoi Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.


5. Cavafy, C. P. The Unfinished Poems: The First English Translation. Based on the Greek Edition of Renata Lavagnini. Trans. Daniel Mendelsohn. A Borzoi Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.


6. de la Mare, Walter, ed. Come Hither: A Family Treasury of Best-Loved Rhymes and Poems for Children. 1923. Decorations by Warren Chappell. New York: Avenel Books, 1990.


7. Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Ed. Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns. Bollingen Series LXXI. 1961. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.


8. Greenblatt, Stephen, & Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard & Katharine Eisaman Maus, ed. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. Ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett & William Montgomery. 1986 & 1988. With an Essay on the Shakespearean Stage by Andrew Gurr. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997.


9. Thomas, Edward. The Annotated Collected Poems. Ed. Edna Longley. 2008. Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books Ltd., 2011.


10. Lovecraft, H. P. Tales. Ed. Peter Straub. The Library of America, 155. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2005.


11. Carey, John, ed. The Faber Book of Reportage. 1987. London: Faber, 1990.


12. Yeats, W. B., ed. Fairy & Folk Tales of Ireland [Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry & Irish Fairy Tales]. 1888 & 1892. Foreword by Kathleen Raine. 1973. List of Sources by Mary Helen Thuente. 1977. Picador. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1979.


13. Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. 1900. New Edition 1250-1918. 1939. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1948.


14. Bridges, Robert, ed. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1918. Second Edition With an Appendix of Additional Notes, and a Critical Introduction by Charles Williams. 1930. The Oxford Bookshelf. 1937. London: Oxford University Press, 1941.


15. James, M. R. The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James. 1931. Pocket Edition. 1942. London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., 1964.

You don't have to tell me that this looks like a pretty odd amalgam of classics and eccentrics. Having Plato and Shakespeare beside you makes sense, I guess - just in case you need a bit of enlightenment - even the Koran and the I-Ching. But H. P. Lovecraft? M. R. James? I make no apology for the ghost stories, I'm afraid. Nor do I think that I have to over-explain the poetry anthologies (Come Hither and the Oxford Book of English Verse: great for browsing, both of them).

I love Edward Thomas's poetry. My relations with Gerard Manley Hopkins are a bit more vexed, but it's a very nice old copy - with annotations by Maurice Duggan, strangely enough. Cavafy is also a perennial favourite. This may not be the most elegant translation of his poems (I have several), but it's definitely the most complete and well-annotated.

What else? I've always enjoyed reading folktales, and this omnibus edition of Irish stories by W. B. Yeats is particularly good. As for the Faber Book of Reportage, the idea of collecting the best eye-witness account of the great events of history (from the destruction of Pompeii to the London blitz) makes for a book too concentrated to be read straight through, but perfect for picking up on a rainy evening.

As for Bizarre Books, "we did it for the money and a good laugh," as the authors bashfully explain. It's not a lofty book, certainly, but it does have its uses (as Messrs Ash and Lake remark of Octogenarian Teetotallers: "Not so much a book as a dreadful warning ...")

[Shelf 2 (a)]

Storage space for books just isn't easy to come by anymore. Bronwyn's been reduced to keeping most of her art catalogues in boxes behind the sofa, and I find myself shoving more and more of my own new accessions in on top of the existing ones. Hence the convention in these listings of a small "•", denoting "on top of" ...

1. Bashō, Matsuo. Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings. Trans. Sam Hamill. Boston: Shambhala, 2000.


2. Bashō, Matsuo. The Complete Haiku. Trans. Jane Reichhold. Illustrated by Shiro Tsujimura. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008.


3. Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ed. The Arabian Nights. The Husain Haddaway Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi: Contexts, Criticism. 1990 & 1995. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.


4. Briggs, Katharine M., ed. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Incorporating the F. J. Norton Collection. Part A: Folk Narratives. 1970. London & New York: Routledge, 2003.


5. Briggs, Katharine M., ed. A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Incorporating the F. J. Norton Collection. Part B: Folk Legends. 1970. London & New York: Routledge, 2001.


6. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621. Ed. Holbrook Jackson. Everyman’s Library. 1932. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1977.


7. Carver, Raymond. All of Us: The Collected Poems. Ed. William L. Stull. Introduction by Tess Gallagher. 1996. London: The Harvill Press, 1997.


8. Carver, Raymond. Collected Stories. Ed. William L. Stull & Maureen P. Carroll. The Library of America, 195. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.


9. D’Israeli, Isaac. Curiosities of Literature. 1791-3, 1823. London: George Routledge & Co., n.d.


10. D'Israeli, Isaac. Amenities of Literature: Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature. A New Edition. 1841. Ed. by His Son, The Right Hon B. Disraeli, Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer. 2 vols. London: Routledge, Warnes & Routledge, 1859.


11. Fort, Charles. The Books of Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned; New Lands; Lo!; Wild Talents. 1919, 1923, 1931 & 1932. Introduction by Tiffany Thayer. 1941. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1959


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12. Fitzgerald, Edward, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. Reynold Alleyne Nicholson. 1909. London: A. & C. Black., 1973.


13. Hass, Robert, ed. & trans. The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.

These are the books I keep roughly at eye-height. They're arranged (more or less) alphabetically, but they are, otherwise, madly eclectic. The books of Bashō's haiku and travel journals shouldn't require too much justification - nor should that little volume of Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. As for the four-volumes-in-two of Kathleen Briggs's Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, all I can say is that if you've never encountered this work, you've missed a treat.

It can't really be read, but it can be consulted and pored over. The same is true of Isaac D'Israeli's collections of "curiosities" from the literary annals. Raymond Carver might seem rather out of place, but his Collected Poems (in particular) is one of my all-time favourite bedside books: unpretentious, elegant, perfect.

The Arabian Nights? Well, if you've looked at this blog at all, you'll have gathered that that's one of my principal obsessions (to the extent that I had to siphon off the materials into another whole site, Scheherazade's Web). This is a nice little collection for everyday purposes. The Anatomy of Melancholy? The only book that could get Dr Samuel Johnson out of bed before midday (according to him): a real friend in times of trial, and a mine of recondite detail on virtually anything antiquarian you can think of. Charles Fort? Almost unreadable in bulk, despite the fascination of its contents, but not a bad book for reading a few pages of before nodding off ... If you like "weird phenomena" as much as I do, that is.

[Shelf 2 (b)]

I guess it's a bit wicked of me to tuck the Greek Dramatists in around the corner, so they can't be extricated without pulling out other books. Whatever. Sue me. I like the idea of reading them very much, but in practise I find plays rather uphill work. I don't have the sort of imagination which can envisage the action going on in front of me. It's a beautiful set of books, though.

As for Nabokov, I guess I regard him as a kind of literary Stanley Kubrick. I don't really enjoy Kubrick's films all that much: so self-conscious and studied. But the more you examine and think about every scene and effect, the more you can learn from them. The great thing about Kubrick is that nothing is there by chance. After watching a Kubrick movie - even such comparatively slight ones as The Shining or Full Metal Jacket - it can be quite dislocating to look at the work of virtually any other director: so many lazy scenes, cars pulling up to curbs, people walking vaguely down corridors ... you miss the almost insane precision of his eye.

That's Nabokov for me. My favourite of his books is Pale Fire, but all of them have that same quality of having been completely thought through. He's a genius, yes. Not a great moralist, as Brian Boyd appears to believe, and as prone to error as any other artist - especially that unfortunate last novel Look at the Harlequins - but a writer's writer nonetheless. Every page and every sentence is a kind of masterclass for other scribblers, when that's what you know you need.

1. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Volume 1: Aeschylus. Ed. David Grene & Richmond Lattimore. Trans. Richmond Lattimore, Seth G. Bernadete & David Grene. 1942, 1953 & 1956. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959.


2. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Volume 2: Sophocles. Ed. David Grene & Richmond Lattimore. Trans. David Grene, Robert Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Wyckoff, John Moore & Michael Jameson. 1941, 1942, 1954, 1957 & 1959. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960.


3. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Volume 3: Euripides. Ed. David Grene & Richmond Lattimore. Trans. Richmond Lattimore, Rex Warner, Ralph Gladstone, David Grene, William Arrowsmith, Witter Bynner & John Frederick Nims. 1942, 1944, 1955, 1956 & 1959. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960.


4. Nabokov, Vladimir. Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight / Bend Sinister / Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. 1941, 1947, 1951. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 87. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.


5. Nabokov, Vladimir. Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire / Lolita: A Screenplay. 1955, 1957, 1962, 1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 88. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.


6. Nabokov, Vladimir. Novels 1969-1974: Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle / Transparent Things / Look at the Harlequins!. 1969, 1972, 1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 89. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.


7. Neruda, Pablo. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Ed. Ilan Stavans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.


8. Neruda, Pablo. Passions and Impressions. [‘Para nacer he nacido’, 1978]. Ed. Matilde Neruda & Miguel Otero Silva. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1983.


9. Neruda, Pablo. Canto General: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. [‘Canto General’, 1950]. Trans. Jack Schmitt. Introduction by Roberto González Echevarría. Latin American Literature and culture, 7. 1991. A Centennial Book. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.


10. Neruda, Pablo. 100 Love Sonnets. [‘Cien sonetos de amor’, 1960]. Trans. Stephen Tapscott. Texas Pan American Series. 1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.


11. Neruda, Pablo. Extravagaria: A Bilingual Edition. 1958. Trans. Alastair Reid. Cape Poetry Paperbacks. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972.


12. Neruda, Pablo. Fully Empowered: A Bilingual Edition. [‘Plenos poderes’, 1962]. Trans. Alastair Reid. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1976.


13. Neruda, Pablo. Isla Negra: A Notebook. A Bilingual Edition. [‘Memorial de Isla Negra’, 1964]. Afterword by Enrico Mario Santí. Trans. Alastair Reid. 1981. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1982.


14. Neruda, Pablo. Residence on Earth. [‘Residencia en la tierra’: I, 1933; II, 1935; III, 1947]. Trans. Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions Press, 1973.


15. Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs. [‘Confieso que he vivido: Memorias’, 1974]. Trans. Hardie St. Martin. 1977. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.


16. Neruda, Pablo. Selected Poems: A Bi-lingual Edition. Ed. Nathaniel Tarn. Trans. Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, & Nathaniel Tarn. 1970. Introduction by Jean Franco. Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.


17. Neruda, Pablo. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. [‘20 Poemas de amor y una Canción desesperada’, 1924]. Trans. W. S. Merwin. 1969. Cape Editions. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.


18. Neruda, Pablo. The Book of Questions. [‘El libro de las preguntas’, 1974]. Trans. William O'Daly. 1991. A Kage-An Book. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2001.


19. Neruda, Pablo. Splendor and Death of Joaquín Murieta. [‘Fulgor y Muerte de Joaquín Murieta’, 1966]. Trans. Ben Belitt. 1972. Noonday Press. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.


20. Yeats, W. B. Yeats’s Poems. Ed. A. Norman Jeffares. Appendix by Warwick Gould. London: Papermac, 1989.


21. Yeats, W. B. A Vision and Related Writings. Ed. A. Norman Jeffares. London: Arena, 1990.


22. Yeats, W. B. Autobiographies: Reveries over Childhood and Youth; The Trembling of the Veil; Dramatis Personae; Estrangement; The Death of Synge; The Bounty of Sweden. 1916, 1922, 1935, 1926, 1928, 1938, 1955. Papermac. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1980.


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23. Chatterton, Thomas. The Poetical Works. Ed. John Richmond. The Canterbury Poets. London: Walter Scott, 1885.


24. Reps, Paul, & Nyogen Senzaki, trans. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.

I can't be without a good edition of Yeats's Poems by my side, and this is a very useful one. A Vision is not to everyone's taste (anyone's taste?), but it's still interesting to pore over from time to time. The Autobiographies are also indispensable, I feel.

As for all the Neruda, what can I say? This isn't my complete collection, but he's not someone who can be read just in dribs and drabs. The Ilan Stavans selection is probably the closest thing to a satisfactory one-volume Neruda, but it's hard not to add a complete Canto General, after which the memoirs demand representation, as do these beautiful bi-lingual editions of books such as Extravagaria (probably my favourite), Isla Negra and a bunch of others. He's not my favourite poet, but there's still a Whitman-like breadth of sympathy about his writing that makes it hard to exhaust.

[Shelf 3 (a)]

And now we enter the zone of the reference books. It may seem harder and harder to justify these in the age of google, but - somewhat paradoxically - this means that they don't get updated quite so often, which means that some dictionaries or encyclopedias can be seen more clearly as classic works in their own right. That's particularly true of the Science Fiction and Fantasy encyclopedias below.

They're both quite vast. They also do far more than simply listing the major authors and books from each genre. The entries on major themes or points of technique are - in most cases - brilliantly reasoned and quite original. Even the most die-hard fan (such as myself) has a lot to learn from John Clute and his team of collaborators. I quite understand why future editions of these two books will be "published" (and continuously updated) online, but that also means these last two print editions will remain indispensable to scholars and students and casual readers.

1. Westwood, Jennifer. Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain. London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1985.


2. Ashe, Geoffrey. Mythology of the British Isles. 1990. London: Methuen London, 1992.


3. Bunyan, John. The Complete Works. Introduction by John P. Gulliver. Illustrated Edition. Philadelphia; Brantford, Ont.: Bradley, Garretson & Co. / Chicago, Ills.; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tenn.; St. Louis, Mo.; San Francisco, Cal.: Wm. Garretson & Co., 1881.


4. Clute, John, & Peter Nicholls, ed. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 1979. 2nd ed. Contributing Editor Brian Stableford. Technical Editor John Grant. Orbit. 1993. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 1999.


5. Clute, John, & John Grant, ed. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Orbit. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 1997.


6. de la Mare, Walter. The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare. Ed. Richard de la Mare. 1969. London: Faber, 1975.


7. Zipes, Jack, trans. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Illustrations by Johnny B. Gruelle. 1987. New York: Bantam Books, 2003.


8. Jackson, Holbrook. The Anatomy of Bibliomania. 1930. London: Faber, 1950.


9. Jacobs, Joseph, ed. English Fairy Tales: Being the Two Collections English Fairy Tales and More English Fairy Tales. 1890 & 1894. Illustrated by Margery Gill. London: The Bodley Head, 1968.


10. Cox, Michael, ed. The Ghost Stories of M. R. James. Illustrated by Rosalind Caldecott. 1986. London: Tiger Books International, 1991.


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11. Cavendish, Richard, ed. Encyclopedia of the Unexplained: Magic, Occultism and Parapsychology. Special consultant on Parapsychology; J. B. Rhine. 1974. Arkana. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989.

There's a lot more in the way of folklore and folk legends here (and before you start giving me a hard time about the lack of local New Zealand material, there is another whole bookcase out in the lounge which is specifically reserved for such books). Besides that, John Bunyan and Walter de la Mare might seem an odd pairing, but they both write such beautiful English: there's always something to be gleaned from them.

The Richard Cavendish book is only one of many I have on kindred subjects, but it's an awfully sensible book, I think. He's certainly a cut above most other writers in the field of occultism and ghostliness. Geoffrey Ashe is quite a different story, but I have to say that I'm meditating a whole future post on him.

[Shelf 3 (b)]

Some language dictionaries, for use with Neruda or naughty old Pierre Louÿs, or one of the Italian books (Dante, Calvino, Montale) I have out in the lounge - as well as that, there's a small selection of some of the more essential Opie books: the Classic Fairy Tales and Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. There are some rather odder choices here, though.

Why Herman Melville? Because I'm fascinated by his poetry, that's why. Of course it's inferior to his prose: not just the endlessly hyped (though, alas, little read) Moby Dick, but also the great stories: "Benito Cereno," "Bartleby" and so on. That doesn't mean it's no good, though. There's no really satisfactory edition of the unpublshed as well as the published poems available yet, so for the moment I'm making do with this elegant reprint of his three self-published volumes of verse.

A Book of the Book is a weird anthology of classic reprints and contemporary essays on all aspects of the book in the age of postmodernism. Bronwyn found it in a library sale, and it just seemed too fascinating to relegate to the office. Ditto Manguel's History of Reading - not as critically sophisticated, but beautifully illustrated and designed.

Verlaine's "secret" poems go quite well with Pierre Louÿs. César Vallejo is, of course, a rather fiercer customer - read better a piece at a time than in bulk, I feel: a process facilitated by this very full new translation (or revision of a revision of a translation).

And the Faerie Queene? I have actually read it, you know: years ago, when I was an undergraduate. This is a particularly handsome edition, extensively annotated, and - as with so many of the other doorstop tomes here - you just never know when it might come in handy. I know that Spenser was a pretty brutal landlord and (possibly) lost a good deal of his lifework when the Irish peasantry burnt down his castle as a protest against his tyranny, but that doesn't mean that his poem can be easily ignored.

The beautiful copy of the Tao te Ching is for rather different moods. The photographs may be a bit hippyish, but such things are beginning to take on a nostalgiac lustre of their own as the years go by.

1. Collins Diccionario Español-Inglés, Inglés- Español / Collins Spanish-English, English-Spanish Dictionary. Ed. Colin Smith with Manuel Bermejo Marcos & Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez. 1971. London & Glasgow: Collins, 1985.


2. Harraps’ Shorter Italian and English Dictionary / Il Nuovo Ragazzini Dizionario Inglese Italiano Italiano Inglese. Ed. Giuseppe Ragazzini. 1984. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli Editore, 1989.


3. Robert-Collins Dictionnaire Français-Anglais, Anglais-Français / Collins-Robert French-English, English-French Dictionary. Ed. Beryl T. Atkins, Alain Duval, Rosemary C. Milne et al. Paris: Société du Nouveau Littré / London & Glasgow: Collins, 1984.


4. Louÿs, Pierre. L’Oeuvre Érotique. Édition établie et présentée par Jean-Paul Goujon. Paris: Sortilèges, 1994.


5. Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.


6. Melville, Herman. The Poems of Herman Melville. 1976. Ed. Douglas Robillard. Kent, Ohio & London: Kent State University Press, 2000.


7. Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. 1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.


8. Opie, Iona & Peter, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.


9. Opie, Iona & Moira Tatem, ed. A Dictionary of Superstitions. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.


10. Rothenberg, Jerome, & Steven Clay, ed. A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections about the Book & Writing. New York: Granary Books, 2000.


11. Verlaine, Paul. Women Men: The Secret Poems of Paul Verlaine. [‘Femmes’, 1890; ‘Hombres’, 1892 / 1904]. Trans. Alastair Elliot. New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1979.


12. Vallejo, César. The Complete Poetry. Trans. Clayton Eshleman. Foreword by Mario Vargas Llosa. Introduction by Efrain Kristal. Chronology by Stephen M. Hart. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.


13. Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. 1977. Revised Second Edition. 2001. Text edited by Hiroshi Yamashita & Toshiyuki Suzuki. Longman Annotated English Poets. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007.


14. Westwood, Jennifer & Jacqueline Simpson. The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys. London: Penguin Books, 2005.


15. Lao Tsu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English. 1972. London: Wildwood House Ltd., 1975.

I fear that I've missed out a number of authors. Why Chatterton, for instance? Well, why not? It's an elegant little book, and it doesn't take up much room, and he is a fascinating character, for all that his poetry seems so lustreless now.

Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibliomania? Rather a silly book, unfortunately - but still a nice idea, and it does go well with Jackson's own Everyman edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy in the shelf above.

Joseph Jacobs? His English Fairy Tales is a worthy companion to the Brothers Grimm (represented here in the very full, if not always particularly elegant, Jack Zipes translation). It is, to be sure, far less scholarly, but just as beautifully written.

Well, I could probably go on and on forever, but I have to stop somewhere. You'd think with all those books sitting right there, I'd never be at a loss for something to read.

Alas, there seems to be a rule of inverse returns: no matter how many fascinating treasures you have in the bookcase by your bed, it's always that one inaccessible volume on the far side of the house that you find yourself hankering after as twilight falls.

[Shelves 1-3]

Classic Ghost Story Writers: Colin Wilson

Colin Wilson (1957)

I used to feel a bit ashamed of reading books by Colin Wilson. They definitely fall into the 'guilty pleasures' category. As you can see from the list below, I collected his fiction fairly assiduously up until the end of the 1970s, but then let the habit lapse.

I do have most of them, though - with the exception of the late 'Spider World' series (1987-2002), and a few others such as The Janus Murder Case (1984), The Personality Surgeon (1985), and the posthumous Lulu: an unfinished novel (2017).

The first one I encountered - and it's still my favourite - was The Mind Parasites (along with, to a slightly lesser extent, its successors The Return of the Lloigor and The Philosopher's Stone).

I'm not quite sure why I liked it so much at the time. True, it was full of bookish information, and ended with one of those characteristic Campbell-era Sci-fi Man-plus resolutions, but there was an unmistakable zest about it.

Colin Wilson: The Mind Parasites (1967)

Fiction:


1. Ritual in the Dark. 1960. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1976.


2. Adrift in Soho. 1961. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1964.


3. The World of Violence. 1963. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1965.


4. Man Without a Shadow. 1963. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1966.


5. Necessary Doubt. 1964. London: Panther Books Ltd., 1966.


6. The Glass Cage: An Unconventional Detective Story. 1966. New York: Bantam Books, 1973.


7. The Mind Parasites. 1967. Berkeley, California: Oneiric Press, 1983.


8. 'The Return of the Lloigor.' In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Ed. August Derleth. 1969. London: Grafton, 1988. 439-501.


9. The Philosopher's Stone. 1969. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1974.


10. The God of the Labyrinth. 1970. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


11. The Killer. 1970. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


12. The Black Room. 1971. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1977.


13. The Schoolgirl Murder Case. 1974. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


14. The Space Vampires. Granada Publishing Limited. Frogmore, St Albans, Hertfordshire: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd., 1976.


15. 'A Novelization of Events in the Life and Death of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin.' In Tales of the Uncanny. New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1983. 487-606.

Colin Wilson: The Philosopher's Stone (1969)

Already, though, I could see some of the features of Wilsonian fiction in general: the weird lack of affect, of any attempt to convey an atmosphere of reality - an atmosphere of anything, really, except people reading books and meeting other people to plan meeting more people to talk about the books and the ideas in them.

One might charitably call it Shavian, after one of his greatest influences, George Bernard Shaw. He too, eschews stylistic and tonal effects in favour of raw ratiocination.

Colin Wilson: Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969)

The thing about Shaw, though, is that he makes difficult ideas sound simple. He has a lot of sensible things to say about a great many features of the world around him. Colin Wilson really only has one idea, dished up again and again in slightly different forms.

That idea is (in its simplest form) that we don't use our brains to the uttermost - that if there were some way in which we could protract and/or artificially induce what psychologist Abraham Maslow called "peak experiences," then mankind could be transformed.

Now whether or not this is a good idea is beside the point. Maslow denied the possibility that the euphoria of peak experiences could be brought on in such a way, but Wilson was convinced that he was wrong. Most of his - very extensive - work on the occult was concerned with whether or not certain mystics and clairvoyants had succeeded in doing so.

His interest in H. P. Lovecraft was mainly to denounce him as an enemy of this "positive" vision of life. That is, until he started writing Lovecraftian fiction himself, after which he used the mechanics of the Cthulhu Mythos to promote the idea of - guess what? - peak experiences, only by now he'd started calling them "faculty x."

Colin Wilson: Peak Experiences and the New Human (1993)

Wilson was an appallingly prolific writer. There were, no doubt, many reasons for this: the need to make a living on book advances must have constituted a considerable temptation to pitch an endless series of books to his publishers (many of them thinly disguised re-hashes of what had gone before).

Colin Wilson: The Outsider (1956)

In critical terms, however, this is what doomed him to the literary fringes. The reviewers who'd hailed his first work The Outsider (1956) as an amazing piece of cultural insight, written by a 24-year-old working-class genius, were somewhat disconcerted to see Religion and the Rebel come thumping down the book-chute the very next year. They began to suspect they'd been had.

In reality, of course, The Outsider was not nearly as original and ground-breaking as they'd thought. It's a sign of the shallowness of British book culture of the time that names such as Dostoyevsky and Hamsun and Rilke, mentioned by a man who'd clearly actually read them, seemed unduly impressive to a great many of these half-educated bigmouths. But then, its successors weren't nearly as bad as they claimed either.

Wilson's first six books, known collectively as "The Outsider Cycle": Religion and the Rebel (1957), The Age of Defeat (1959), The Strength to Dream (1962), Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963), Beyond the Outsider (1965) and the summary volume Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966) may sound a bit monotonous at times, but they did introduce readers to one of his most considerable virtues: the ability to summarize other people's books and ideas clearly and interestingly - albeit at great length.

You may see this as a journalistic rather than a strictly writerly skill - but it does explain why even Wilson's more reluctant fans (such as myself) are prepared to lend shelf room to so many of his tomes.

Speaking personally, I could give a shit about 'faculty x'. None of the stuff he says about it seems to me to make it sound more than an agreeable fairy tale. He always cranks round to it sooner or later, though - except, perhaps, in some of his later, more unabashedly commercial, compilations, such as the 1991 Mammoth Book of the Supernatural, 'edited' by his son Damon Wilson, who also co-wrote a number of these late works. That particular tome, despite its considerable size, didn't even make it to the (admittedly rather flawed) listings on Wikpedia's Colin Wilson Bibliography page).

Colin Wilson: The Occult: A History (1971)

His bestselling book The Occult (1971) and its sequels Mysteries (1978) and Beyond the Occult (1988), as well the host of others on telemetry, past lives, poltergeists, After-death experiences, etc. etc. consist mainly of retellings of classic ghost stories and other strange happenings. That's why they're so very entertaining to read.

The Essential T. C. Lethbridge (1980)

If you've tried the experiment of going from Wilson's version to the actual published work it was based on (as I have in the case of T. C. Lethbridge), you find just how grossly he simplifies, and how blatantly he bends their insights to fit in with his vision of a 'faculty x' dominated universe. This is bad.

Catherine Crowe: The Night-Side of Nature (1848)

On the other hand, however, I would probably never have encountered T. C. Lethbridge, or Catherine Crowe, or Atlantis theorist Rand Flem-Ath, or a host of other fascinating people and writers without the nudge given me by Colin Wilson's many, many works of summary and synthesis. It may not make him a great mind, but it certainly makes him a benefactor of a sort.

Harry Ritchie: Success Stories (1988)

Of course, there will always be mockers and scoffers who see Colin Wilson as a bit of a fraud or even (what's worse) a joke. If you'd like to read the case for the prosecution, I do recommend the very amusing chapter on Wilson and his acolytes (principally novelist Bill Hopkins and pop philosopher Stuart Holroyd) in Harry Ritchie's 1988 book Success Stories: Literature and the Media in England, 1950-1959 (conveniently summarised in this 2006 article):

[When he] handed his journals over to the Daily Mail [in December 1956] ... Wilson's private thoughts made for juicy copy. "The day must come when I am hailed as a major prophet," was one quote. "I must live on, longer than anyone else has ever lived ... to be eventually Plato's ideal sage and king ..."

Harry Ritchie is okay in my book. I met him once in a pub, and he insisted on shaking me by the hand when he discovered that I was the only other human being he'd ever met who'd actually heard of, let along read Kingsley Amis's first book of poems Bright November (1947). I'm not sure if I dared to admit to him that I actually had a xeroxed copy of the book shelved with all my other Amis-iana at home in New Zealand ...

Is Ritchie right about Wilson? Objectively, I fear he may well be. But that doesn't really account for the fact that I've had so much pleasure reading about obscure supernatural events in the endless pages of Wilson's stream-of-consciousness reading-notebooks-in-the-form-of-individually-titled-volumes. As one of G. K. Chesterton's characters once remarked (in his first novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill):

Next to authentic goodness in a book ... we desire a rich badness.

Wilson may be, in many ways, a bad writer, but it is a rich badness - and, really, who, even (I was about to write 'especially') among geniuses, isn't a bad writer at times?

So here it is, then, in all its glory, my own private library of Colin Wilsoniana. You'll note that it even includes a few of his many books on murder and serial killers, but that aspect of his interests I don't share at all. It's the occult and paranormal investigation stuff that really fascinates me:

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A Colin Wilson library

Colin Henry Wilson
(1931-2013)

Non-fiction:


1. The Outsider. 1956. Pan Piper. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1963.


2. Religion and the Rebel. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1957.


3. [with Patricia Pitman]: Encyclopedia of Murder. 1961. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1964.


4. The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination. 1962. Abacus. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1982.


5. Origins of the Sexual Impulse. 1963. London: Panther Books Ltd., 1966.


6. Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs. 1964. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


7. Colin Wilson On Music (Brandy of the Damned). 1964. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1967.


8. Beyond the Outsider. 1965. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1966.


9. Voyage to a Beginning: A Preliminary Autobiography. Introduction by Brocard Sewell. London: Cecil and Amelia Woolf, 1969.


10. The Occult: A History. 1971. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.


11. Order of Assassins: The Psychology of Murder. 1972. Panther Books. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1975.


12. Strange Powers. 1973. London: Abacus, 1975.


13. Tree by Tolkien. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1974.


14. Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural. 1978. London: Granada Publishing, 1979.


15. Starseekers. 1980. London: Granada Books, 1982


16. Poltergeist! A Study in Destructive Haunting. London: New English Library, 1981.


17. The Psychic Detectives: The Story of Psychometry and Paranormal Crime Detection. London & Sydney: Pan Books, 1984.


18. Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence for Life after Death. London: Harrap, 1985.


19. Beyond the Occult. London: Guild Publishing, 1988.


20. The Mammoth Book of the Supernatural. Ed. Damon Wilson. London: Robinson Publishing, 1991.


21. [with Damon Wilson]: World Famous Strange Tales & Weird Mysteries. London: Magpie Books Ltd., 1992.


22. [with Damon Wilson & Rowan Wilson]: World Famous Scandals. London: Magpie Books Ltd., 1992.


23. From Atlantis to the Sphinx. London: Virgin Books, 1996.


24. Ghost Sightings. Strange But True. Sydney: The Book Company, 1997.


25. [with Rand Flem-Ath]: The Atlantis Blueprint. 2000. London: Warner Books, 2001.

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Colin Wilson (2006)