Re: Less Familiar Weird Literature - Capes &c.
Posted by:
jimrockhill2001 (IP Logged)
Date: 10 November, 2008 06:12PM
I am very fond of Capes. Arno/Books for Libraries reprinted the collection AT A WINTER'S FIRE, Hugh Lamb compiled one collection for Equation Chillers and another (expanded from the Equation) for Ash-Tree. These all contain excellent work. It may take some time for some readers to adjust to Capes' full-dress Victorian style, but it did not bother me. Thomas Loring will publishing the rest of the shorter supernatural fiction some time next year. There is at least one supernatural novel as well, though it has not been reprinted.
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) is also excellent. Some of her stories are ghost stories with historical settings or backgrounds. Her one short supernatural novel - OKE OF OKEHURST, or A PHANTOM LOVER - is among these, though the flavor is closer to Henry James of Oliver Onions. Most of her remaining stories are in the manner of Medieval and Renaissance legends, with a fascinating tension between pagan and Christian religious rites, somewhat similar to Garnett's TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, though darker in tone and event.
Another superb specialist in supernatural fiction with historical settings is Marjorie Bowen (Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Joseph Shearing, Robert Paye, and George Preedy). Her supernatural novels (except paradoxically for the very early BLACK MAGIC) are very difficult (and expensive) to locate, but on the evidence of THE HAUNTED VINTAGE, I suspect these are well worth seeking out in university libraries or waiting for someone to reprint. I just spent the weekend tracking down a library copy of her George Preedy supernatural novel, THE DEVIL SNAR'D. Fortunately, her shorter supernatural fiction is much easier to find, even if the reader has to be satisfied (in the meantime) with only a portion of it. Wordsworth Editions reprinted THE BISHOP OF HELL (minus Sadleir's introduction, alas!), Arkham House's KECKSIES is also still in print (and worth every penny!). Bowen (and Lee) are far, far removed from their Victorian distaff forebears, and many of their stories are anything but polite. Vivid, dramatic, and often violent, with little symbolic touches that add to their resonance.
Re: Morrow - yes, I have read him, and enjoyed him. He reminds me most of Bierce, though the influence is just as likely to have been the other way around. Many of them are more contes cruels than supernatural tales.
Jim