This thread is for the identification and discussion of nonfiction that writers of weird fiction, fantasy, etc. read not as specific background for their writing (though it might have had some incidental value) but largely for pleasure.

So, for example, the ghost story author M. R. James relished some of the State Trials. His Preface to The Lady Ivie's Trial...1684 edited by Sir John C. Fox (Oxford 1929) says, "The State Trials, as presented in the series of octavo volumes which began to be issued in 1809, contain a vast deal of reading of absorbing interest not only to the professed lawyer or historian but to the lay person. ...how can a series of dramas fail to be interesting, in each of which the interests or the life of some man or woman are at stake, and in which every class of the community comes on the stage and says its say?"

This particular trial featured the notorious Judge Jeffreys. "Things are never dull when he is at the bar or on the bench." The Ivie trial and others of the period report "the unadorned common speech of Englishmen," better than in the plays. James found both drama and humor in these reports.

Well, what about other authors of our favored genres? What nonfiction* did they read for enjoyment? I believe Lovecraft relished almanacs if they were old enough.

*Biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, letters, a broad range of scientific works, geography and travel, politics and government, philology, criticism, theology, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 8 Aug 21 | 09:39PM by Dale Nelson.

I intend to start compiling, if only for my own use, a bibliography of books and works that Arthur Machen approved of. That's an excuse for rereading Hieroglyphics, Far-Off Things, et al.

Ones that come to mind without checking:

Three books he said (or the Recluse in Hieroglyphics said) he read frequently, every one to three years, include Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes' Don Quixote, and Dickens's Pickwick Papers -- the last being the only one of the three that I have read. I wish I knew whether Machen meant Rabelais in the original French, or the 17th-century Urquhart translation, which has been called "the finest translation ever made from one language into another."*

Machen referred to Life on the Mississippi as being Mark Twain's best book. I'm afraid I didn't record the source, but my guess is it was Hieroglyphics. Yes, I'm reading the Twain now, slowly, just before lights out from time to time. The early chapter with the rivermen and the haunted barrel is first-rate gruesome humor.

He speaks fondly of the fiction of Sir Walter Scott as something he explored when he was a lad, and he sticks up for it as an adult. I'm not sure he zeroes in on particular titles. Speaking for myself, I've found Scott's best work to be the novels set a few generations before Scott's own time, not the medieval ones. For first-timers, I'd suggest The Bride of Lammermoor or The Heart of Midlothian, with the suggestion that one start with Chapter 2.

Scott's "Proud Maisie" is one of my favorite poems. Just now reading it again I got goosebumps on my arms and the backs of my legs.

[www.poetryfoundation.org]

I haven't read any of his long poems yet.

Most of this posting maybe should be deleted, since only Life on the Mississippi qualifies as nonfiction. I'll leave that stuff there in case anyone's interested, with that acknowledgment.


*[scholarcommons.sc.edu]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 9 Aug 21 | 04:39PM by Dale Nelson.