This week it's been a mixture of poetic and supernatural volumes. I've shaken hands with the progenitor of the Gothic, danced with T. S. Eliot, flirted with Betjeman, and had a right good roll around with Henry James. Here's this Thursday's 'week in books'...
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
When it was first published, this tale purported to be the translation of a newly discovered medieval manuscript; in fact, the thing was all the invention of Walpole. It invented the genre we now know as Gothic literature - Walpole was an enthusiast of Gothic architecture and led the Gothic revival in England (Strawberry Hill Gothic, I recently learned, was named after the Gothic mansion he built for his home). The book is short and the pages turn easily enough, and although the prose is a little overblown in parts and the characters are far too melodramatic to each other, it contains a charm all its own and is a pleasing diversion for a wet Sunday afternoon. Trivia: Walpole was the son of Robert Walpole, largely considered first Prime Minister of Great Britain (though that title was not used till the early twentieth century).
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
Generally, you start off hating Eliot, then come to accept him, then you come to love him. Few, if any, forgive him. I've read this so many times, and every now and then I return to it to find what I've never noticed before. This poem is perhaps his masterpiece, and is a mixture of all sorts. First, poetic styles: free verse, rhyming couplets, quatrains; second, languages: English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek; third, high and low culture: music-hall songs, and allusions to Shakespeare, Spenser, Webster, Marvell, Kyd, Dante, Baudelaire, and many, many more. It's one of those poems everyone should read, and then promptly reread. Trivia: Eliot toyed with calling parts of the poem 'He Do the Police in Different Voices', after a line from Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.
Alice and Claude Askew, Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer
In the wake of Conan Doyle's hugely popular Sherlock Holmes stories (which appeared in the Strand magazine from 1891), and with the rise in psychical research and interest in spiritualism, numerous authors created their own Holmes-like detectives who investigated ghostly occurrences. Algernon Blackwood had John Silence, William Hope Hodgson had Carnacki (the 'Ghost-Finder'), and Alice and Claude Askew had Aylmer Vance, who is assisted by his own 'Watson' with clairvoyant powers, Dexter. These eight adventures are highly entertaining and heartily recommended to anyone with a penchant for the weird. Until this lovely and inexpensive Wordsworth edition it was not at all easy to find these stories, so go and treat yourself.
John Betjeman, Mount Zion (1931) and Continual Dew (1937)
The latter volume here contains one of Betjeman's most famous poems (or most infamous, if you happen to like Slough). The first, slim volume contains the popular 'Death in Leamington', and although these poems are, on the whole, not as profound as later ones, they demonstrate Betjeman's already-accomplished talent for poetry, and for the stylistic and metrical details that go towards making good poetry. Well worth a look.
Henry James, Ghost Stories of Henry James
This volume (again, from Wordsworth) contains all of James's most famous supernatural tales, including the novella The Turn of the Screw, and other gems such as 'The Friends of the Friends' and 'The Jolly Corner'. So far as the rest go, they range from good to mere mild diversions, and several of them, such as 'The Private Life' and 'The Third Person', are more society comedies than spine-tingling terror-inducers. But if you're a stranger to James, or find his novels a bit hard-going, these are a good place to go to, to dip your toe into the Jamesian water. Enjoy.
Right, I'm off. Next week my round-up will be on Wednesday, devoted readers, as I'm off down south to gabble about Arthur Machen on Thursday morning, and will be webless. Till then, then, fare ye well.
Trombone!
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