I will read Wilkie Collins's Mad Monkton, when I get a chance.

Jojo Lapin X Wrote:
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> ARMADALE was, for me, the greatest reading
> experience of last year. I have thoroughly enjoyed
> everything of Collins's that I have read, but that
> one is breathtakingly over the top. And, as there
> is a Penguin Classics edition of it, it is hardly
> "neglected."

Ah, once again a reminder of how out-of-touch I've become with things. I wasn't aware of the Penguin edition; nice to hear. What I was familiar with was the older Dover edition, and I'd simply never come across anyone in person or online who had even heard of, let alone read, the book. In this case, I am more than happy to be proven wrong....

I have so many unread authors to take on, that I've had to limit myself to "the best of" for several of them. Though I hate doing that with an author of the caliber of Le Fanu. I bought Dover's Best Ghost Stories of Sheridan Le Fanu, which is, as Jim said, an excellent collection, and a very pleasantly produced trade paperback to hold in ones hands.

However, I put off the follow-up Dover volume. I looked into "The Vision of Tom Chuff" and found it extremely bleak. But I have printed out pages of "Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling", "The Child That Went with the Fairies", and "Laura Silver Bell", which I find essential reading.

One thing I enjoy most with Le Fanu, are the milieu details he fills into his stories. I think he must have lived a life full of quaint impressions and meetings with colorful characters. He is very good at recreating it.

He also has a great sense of the dynamic contrast between the delicate and the grim. He's a talented "painter".

And his fates are totally merciless. In one story a bad character trips backwards into an open grave. He tries to mitigate the fall by grabbing for the walls, but his fingers just barely fails to reach. Will he be shown some pity by the author? No. He lands on his head, and breaks his neck.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> One thing I enjoy most with Le Fanu, are the
> milieu details he fills into his stories. I think
> he must have lived a life full of quaint
> impressions and meetings with colorful characters.
> He is very good at recreating it.
>
> He also has a great sense of the dynamic contrast
> between the delicate and the grim. He's a talented
> "painter".

You hit the nail very much on its head. His details are utterly delightful.

Thank you all for your suggestions. Much food for thought.

A good friend of mine read and absolutely loved ARMADALE a few years ago. I have the Oxford World Classics pb on the shelf, and really need to find the time to read it. I recall that Dover's version elicited an ecstatic response from several critics when it first released (which dates me somewhat, I know), but Dover has not been very kind to its backlist over the past couple of decades, allowing even such a superb book as Bleiler's selection of Dunsany and Sime (GODS, MEN AND GHOSTS) to go out of print. The surges in popularity and condescension Collins' work goes through every couple of decades has been rather puzzling to the extent that I have often wondered whether these people could really be writing about the same author.

Knygatin Wrote:
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> And his fates are totally merciless. In one story
> a bad character trips backwards into an open
> grave. He tries to mitigate the fall by grabbing
> for the walls, but his fingers just barely fails
> to reach. Will he be shown some pity by the
> author? No. He lands on his head, and breaks his
> neck.


And not just the villains. A many of his sympathetic characters suffer horrific fates being ground down by that "vast machinery of hell" he mentions, generally for no fault and without any real purpose to their suffering. In effect, Le Fanu (however he actually saw such matters) presents very much a Deistic universe where the god created the thing and simply left the clockwork to run on its own; while the forces we would identify as "evil" are still very much present... but they, too, seem to often be idiotic, mindless, and yet not-quite-random in their actions.

Kyngatin: I have probably mentioned this elsewhere (I don't recall at the moment), but you might be interested in looking up Jack Sullivan's book Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood. His discussion of Le Fanu and his use of such themes is certainly among the best I've seen, and provides considerable food for thought....

I second the recommendation of Jack Sullivan. Sullivan published three essays on Le Fanu, all of them excellent: "The Archetypal Ghost Story", the opening chapter of ELEGANT NIGHTMARES deals, primarily with "Green Tea", the next chapter deals with the remainder of Le Fanu's spectral fiction, and he wrote the essay on Le Fanu in THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO SUPERNATURAL FICTION. Gary Crawford, Brian Showers, and some other guy included "The Archetypal Ghost Story" in the book of biographical and critical essays on Le Fanu they edited for Hippocampus Press in 2011. Both essays from ELEGANT NIGHTMARES would have been included had their been space. ELEGANT NIGHTMARES is excellent throughout, and not merely on Le Fanu. All three of these books should be available at any larger university library, and the last of these three, at least, is still in print. Edward Wagenknecht's essay on Le Fanu in SEVEN MASTERS OF SUPERNATURAL FICTION is also excellent, as are the essays he wrote on the other six masters, despite some out of date biographical material that in nowise compromises his insights.

Excluding several little squibs here and there, which do not attempt to address Le Fanu in any serious manner, the least worthwhile essay I have read on Le Fanu, so far, has been Ivan Melada's contribution to Twayne's English Author Series. Biographical mistakes appear as early as the timeline that prefaces the book - nearly a decade after W. J. McCormack's biography should have set most of these matters in stone - and the discussion of the author's work is plagued by some of the worst pigeon-holing I have seen. Either the works are Christian allegories of some kind (only "The Mysterious Lodger" really qualifies) or are proto-Freudian studies of neurosis. Details - often major ones - which he cannot fit into these definitions are simply ignored, to the extent that some works, notably CHECKMATE, simply fail to fall under his scrutiny.

Re: suffering in Le Fanu. It is frequently the innocent who suffer, not merely Reverend Jennings, but also the child visited by the ghostly hand in THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCH-YARD, and the child driven to madness in "Dickon the Devil". The clearest, and cruelest examples occur in the one clear allegory, "The Mysterious Lodger", in which an assortment of increasingly hideous visitations and events occur to shake the faith of a family, with the worst incidents involving the children, until the final intervention saves a portion of them. It is difficult to determine at this point if Le Fanu - whose siblings and wife were suffering the loss of loved ones and in great pangs over the religious doubts these losses were causing - meant this story to be taken seriously, as a sincere attempt to come to grips with faith in the face of adversity, or was writing a veiled critique this type of contemporary allegory. The result is that the happy ending for the few makes the fate of the innocents earlier in the story seem even more cruel and arbitrary.

jdworth Wrote:
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> I'd simply never
> come across anyone in person or online who had
> even heard of, let alone read, the book.

Oh, there are hundreds of us! In the Armadale Society. We have regular meetings. Just kidding. You are the only other person I have come across who has read it.

jdworth Wrote:
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> Deistic universe where the
> god created the thing and simply left the
> clockwork to run on its own; while the forces we
> would identify as "evil" are still very much
> present... but they, too, seem to often be
> idiotic, mindless, and yet not-quite-random in
> their actions.

That is an awful predicament. Azathoth. (I can't help thinking that H. P. Lovecraft is with us here, in spirit, sharing the appreciation for Le Fanu, chuckling contentedly, delving in the weird fiction his soul frustratingly missed. (Or! Perhaps Le Fanu's Christian background is still an obstacle to Lovecraft's aesthetic mind?! But I strongly doubt it! The quaint old culture, unrelenting mood, encompassing atmosphere, and exquisite artistic expertise at writing, is far too appealing. Le Fanu is, all in all, better than the academically conditioned M. R. James.) . . . To CAS, I don't think Le Fanu was such a big deal, although he appreciated him. . . . CAS's spirit is far away, treading infinitely stranger landscapes.)

Personally, I think the above deistic philosophy is caused by the Universe being too vast and complex in its paths, for us to grasp. But the Universe nevertheless harbors a law of cause and effect (that we to some extent can steer in, by wisdom and intuition), although the justice of it may seem unfair and blind, because it ultimately reaches beyond our persons, sweeping us along like dust particles. Still, much can be done within the limits of the personal life, the microcosmos within, by walking the true paths, of least resistance meant for us.

I just bought a second edition of Algernon Blackwood's The Centaur, Macmillan 1916, in sensible condition with dust jacket, for $4.70. I thought that was pretty good!

My other copy is a paperback, but it has some typos, and the typographical design is bad.

The Centaur is perhaps the single most important book I have read. It can function as a bible for pagans. I think The Centaur should be required reading for all high-school or university students, to redeem the materialism of our society.

Blackwood is in a class of his own. I enjoy him not so much for artistic colour (at which he is somewhat limited), as for his spiritual strength.

Unfortunately Lovecraft's opinion of "Sherry" (as he rather derisively called him) was not high, though this had nothing to do with Le Fanu's religious views; after all, he had a number of friends who had traditional views, and though he would debate them, it never interfered with his liking of or respect for them. At that time, of course, Le Fanu's work was very difficult to come by, and (so far as I am aware), he only read two things by him: The House by the Churchyard --which, as far as the weird is concerned, would likely have been far too attenuated for his taste), and "Green Tea". (I'll look up the exact quotations and give them later, when I return home from work.) He had a more favorable opinion of the latter, but even then felt no real attraction to the work.

As for The Centaur... I have, but have not yet read, this one, or Jimbo, both of which HPL mentions approvingly in SHiL. I have, however, heard a great deal about this aspect of the novel, which makes me rather look forward to it.

Jojo: And here you had me eagerly anticipating joining such a society! What a cruel jest to play on someone.... Ah, well, there's always Gilbert & Sullivan..... Good to hear, though, that you thought so highly of Collins' novel. Have you read any of his other novel-length works?

I also think The Centaur is a wonderful novel... I've just started dipping into the old Penguin edition of Ancient Sorceries & Others by Blackwood... some of which I already know, but it's a good collection nonetheless and it has a marvelous cover. Blackwood seems to have been ill served by publishers in recent years. Okay, there's lots of selected works, here and there but considering his importance I'm surprised that there's not a complete works available by any of the small presses... and so many older anthologies seem to replicate a similar selection of tales... however I've spotted this, which seems quite reasonably priced for a Centipede Press title... does anyone know how complete it is or a table of contents? I assume it might just be a reformatted version of this one, but again I see no list of contents anywhere...

jdworth Wrote:
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> Unfortunately Lovecraft's opinion of "Sherry" (as
> he rather derisively called him) was not high,
> though this had nothing to do with Le Fanu's
> religious views; after all, he had a number of
> friends who had traditional views, and though he
> would debate them, it never interfered with his
> liking of or respect for them.

I meant in relation to writing. How Christian beliefs may hamper the ability to create genuine cosmic weird atmosphere by introducing prosaic morals and allegory.

The English Assassin Wrote:
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> I've just started dipping into the old Penguin
> edition of Ancient Sorceries & Others by
> Blackwood... some of which I already know, but
> it's a good collection nonetheless and it has a
> marvelous cover.

> Centipede Press title...
> does anyone know how complete it is or a table of
> contents? I assume it might just be a reformatted
> version of this one, but again I see no list of
> contents anywhere...


The recent Penguin edition of Ancient Sorceries & Others, edited by S. T. Joshi, is excellent.

The first edition of the Centipede Press is an extensive collection of short stories, but not complete in any way.

jdworth Wrote:
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> Have you read
> any of his other novel-length works?

Sure. Apart from the obvious ones, I particularly recommend NO NAME, which features another resourceful young female villain. Well, heroine, actually, but Collins had to pretend not to condone her actions in order to appease conventional morality. It nevertheless caused some controversy.