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Swan River Press Is Moving
I mentioned in our September newsletter that Swan River Press would be moving in October.
That hectic week is now upon us!
I will remain in Dublin, but will be moving to ÆON HOUSE, a small, Edwardian cottage in a secluded and less frequented quarter of the inner city. The house is situated between a maternity hospital and a local funeral parlour. If there is a metaphor here, perhaps it’s best not to dwell on it.
I’ll endeavour to keep on top of correspondence and orders during all of this, but the latter half of October and early November might get more complex for me, so I would be grateful if you could keep this in mind should you need a response for anything.
By all means, orders are welcome whenever. I will try to get orders into the post as soon as possible, though, given the circumstances, please expect some delays. I will do my best.
So until we are settled . . .
Brian J. Showers
Ranelagh, Dublin
Our Haunted Year 2021
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that running a small press is not an easy job. It’s a precarious balancing act with limited resources on one side and an ever-shifting set of challenges on the other. This year was perhaps the most difficult I’ve experienced, due not only to the continuing pandemic, but also from the very real fallout caused by those twin bad decisions: Brexit and the Trump administration. We’ve been subjected to significant jumps in postage, reams of customs forms where there were none before, and supply chain issues that are likely to affect the entire publishing industry for the foreseeable future. And yet . . .
. . . despite all this, publishing remains a pleasure. Swan River Press generates a domineering amount of work—and it’s not even my day job. What it is, though, is an opportunity for me to engage with friends, colleagues and ideas, indulge in creativity, and put some truly wonderful literature into the world. I love designing books, the thrill of unboxing each new shipment, and getting them into the hands of readers. I take a lot of pride in what the Swan River team does, and I know we work hard to do it. Sure, I might grumble occasionally (and will continue to do so), but rest assured, I wouldn’t trade Swan River Press for anything.
As most of you already know, I’ve made it a tradition to take stock of our accomplishments over the past twelve months. I find it’s a good practice, even therapeutic, as it’s easy to lose sight of all the good work that’s being done. It seems all the more important to do so this year as the struggle to keep the barge on an even keel felt all the more difficult. But here we are. We made it. So let’s have a look at 2021.
Our first book of the year was in collaboration with our multi-talented friend to the north, Reggie Chamberlain-King: The Fatal Move and Other Stories by Conall Cearnach. Reggie first wrote about Cearnach for The Green Book 11, prompting me to track down a copy of the Irish writer’s sole collection. “Cearnach” was the pseudonym of the Belfast-born F. W. O’Connell, a peculiar Protestant divine, linguist and Irish language scholar, oddball essayist, and early national broadcaster. The Fatal Move is truly a strange and fascinating collection. It showcases a wide scope of modes: the conte cruel, the ghost story, the locked-room mystery, and the science-fictional satire. I published the Jamesian tale “The Fiend that Walks Behind” in The Green Book 15, and shortly thereafter decided to publish the whole damn book—which hadn’t seen an outing since its initial publication in 1924. Reggie provided a lengthy and erudite study of Cearnach’s fascinating life and works, and we added a selection of equally oddball essays to round out the volume. As Supernatural Tales’ David Longhorn observes, this book “illuminates some of the more obscure byways of Irish literature”. If you want to read more about The Fatal Move—and the fascinating story behind the book’s cover art, check our my previous blog post. You can also listen to Reggie discussing Cearnach on BBC Radio. (Also be sure to check out The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland, a new anthology edited by Reggie Chamberlain-King.)
Next is the fifth instalment of our ongoing anthology series, Uncertainties, our showcase of new writing—this time featuring contributions from Ireland, Canada, America, and the United Kingdom—with each writer exploring the idea of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. I decided to take the reins this year and put together a line-up of stories from twelve contemporary writers such as Ramsey Campbell, Alan Moore, Aislínn Clarke, and Carly Holmes. The cover for this volume was provided by Ksenia Korniewska, whose work I had long admired on Instagram. With Uncertainties 5, I finally had an excuse to work with her. Along with The Fatal Move, Uncertainties 5 is the first of our books with printed buckram boards, a feature with which we will endeavour to continue. As with previous volumes, Uncertainties 5 has been well-received: Deirdre Sullivan’s “Little Lives” won the An Post Book Award for Short Story of the Year, while the Irish Times reviewed the anthology as, “Challenging and uncanny, these are exactly the kinds of stories we need to survive in a world that keeps getting stranger.” I’m also quite proud of the foreword I wrote, the culmination of an awful lot of ruminating about the horror genre and it’s many facets. You can read the essay online: “That Didn’t Scare Me”.
A selection of stories by L. T. Meade was something I’d been considering since Bending to Earth came out in 2019. In that sense, Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures is the next instalment in our unofficial “Strange Stories by Irish Women” series, which to-date includes titles by Dorothy Macardle, Rosa Mulholland, B. M. Croker, Katharine Tynan, and Clotilde Graves. For Eyes of Terror, I went to Meade scholar Janis Dawson, who had written an excellent author profile on Meade for The Green Book 16. Meade’s stories were widely published in popular fin de siècle magazines, and this selection showcases her macabre specialties: medical or scientific mysteries featuring doctors, scientists, occult detectives, criminal women with weird powers, unusual medical interventions, fantastic scientific devices, murder, mesmerism, and manifestations of insanity. Quoth Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, “[Meade’s] scariest, and hitherto scattered, short horror fiction is finally reassembled in Swan River Press’s Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures, superbly edited by Janis Dawson. Highly recommended.”
Our fourth book this year has its roots in the Dublin Ghost Story Festival at which Joyce Carol Oates was our guest of honour in 2018. Surely working with Joyce would be a career highlight for any publisher: it certainly is for me. The Ruins of Contracoeur and Other Presences is a collection of Joyce’s trademark grotesqueries; check this out: “A group of resourceful young girls punish the men of a small town for unspeakable lusts by luring them to a derelict factory and into the toils of a bizarre contraption; a dead man tries to makes sense of a strange epiphany he experienced one day when out hiking amid gigantic ancient redwoods; and a state judge, fleeing disgrace, settles with his family on an isolated ruinous estate where some dread thing prowls in the night . . . ” Wow! So for this publication, I wanted to do something extra special. First, asking Lisa Tuttle to write the introduction was an obvious choice—folks, I’m still kicking myself for not recording the fascinating guest of honour interview she conducted with Joyce at the DGSF. For the cover, I went to Meggan Kehrli, who mainly serves as Swan River’s designer. I hope you’ll agree, she turned in something special (and just wait until you seen the boards). Finally, the entire edition is signed not only by Joyce, but also by Meggan and Lisa. And in atonement for my aforementioned sin, you can watch an online conversation between Lisa and Joyce that we recorded, with the help of Eric Karl Anderson, for the launch of The Ruins of Contracoeur. My sincere gratitude again to you, Joyce, for the opportunity to publish this book!
(Buy The Ruins of Contracoeur here.)
Our last hardback publication for the year is another entry in the “Strange Stories by Irish Women” series: A Vanished Hand and Other Stories by Clotilde Graves. Of course, you’ll always be familiar with Grave’s work from Bending to Earth. Graves is one of the most interesting and neglected writers I’ve come across, whose writing is as difficult to pin down as her personality. In her early years, she was known as the dramatist “Clo Graves”, but became better known under her fiction-writing persona, “Richard Dehan”. She transgressed contemporary gender norms by dressing in male attire, wearing her hair short, and smoking in public. This border crossing can be seen also in her work, which encompasses a wide variety of forms and modes. And while she wrote relatively few fantastical stories, she was devoted to tales of lingering revenants, mysterious cryptids, and grotesque sciences—often laced with her sardonic sense of humour. This volume seeks to recover this side of Graves’s writing by including stories from across her career, which challenge definition and range across the speculative genres. The selection of thirteen stories was made by Melissa Edmundson, who also provided an expert introduction on Graves and her work. You’ll also, no doubt, notice the exceptionally striking cover by Brian Coldrick, who also gave us the cover for Eyes of Terror earlier in the year (as well as the covers for our Mulholland and Tynan volumes). I had a lot of fun working on this book, another landmark of its kind. We’ll be working with both Brian and Melissa again for sure.
We also published two issues of our journal The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and the Fantastic. It’s hard to believe that the journal will read its ten-year anniversary next year. Based on the popularity of Issue 15, The Green Book 17 featured a selection of rare fiction and poetry by the likes of H. de Vere Stacpoole, Herbert Moore Pim, Katharine Tynan, Dora Sigerson Shorter, and L. T. Meade. We also reprinted in this volume Althea Gyles’s “weirdly powerful and beautiful” illustrations to Oscar Wilde’s poem “The Harlot’s House”. Issue 18 featured eleven entries from our (still tentatively titled) Guide to Irish Gothic and Supernatural Fiction Writers project, including profiles of George Croly, Anna Maria Hall, Fitz-James O’Brien, Jane Barlow, Harry Clarke, Iris Murdoch, and more. Our issues for 2022 are already coming together nicely—the next will be loosely themed on Dublin’s theosophical scene of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Anyone who is unsure where to jump in on this journal, we’ve a special offer running too. It’s a secret.)
You also might have noticed that we substantially added to our paperback catalogue this year. In 2020 we published three paperback titles. In 2021, we increased that to a total of nineteen. Among them you’ll find Curfew & Other Eerie Tales by Lucy M. Boston, Strange Epiphanies by Peter Bell, and The Anniversary of Never by Joel Lane. We’ve got another six titles waiting to be reprinted in early 2022, including The Pale Brown Thing by Fritz Leiber and The Sea Change by Helen Grant. Rest assured, hardbacks will remain our primary focus—not to mention still the best way to support the press’s ongoing work. Please also be aware that our anthologies featuring contemporary writers will not be reprinted as paperbacks. Once those are out of print, they will truly be gone! If you want to see what books we have available in paperback, have a look here (scroll down to “Paperback”). And if your next question contains the word “When” in it, do be sure to join our mailing list.
Now if anyone is interested in the figures, we published 7 new titles this year, totalling 1,288 pages, 2,481 copies, and 363,460 words. I have a nifty spreadsheet that keeps track of all of this stuff for me. I love literature, but these numbers help put our achievements into perspective too.
We had a bit of change up this year as well. Ken Mackenzie left the team having worked with us since 2013. His first book with us was Seventeen Stories by Mark Valentine and he’d typeset every publication through Uncertainties 5 earlier this year. Ken brought a polish to our pages and helped make our books all the better for it. I’m grateful to Ken for all his work over the years and wish him the best in all his future endeavours. Quickly stepping up as our new typesetter and team member is Steve J. Shaw, who many followers of independent press will know from his own Black Shuck Books imprint. Steve proved himself invaluable from the outset, not only as our new typesetter, but with his insight into the workings of independent publishing. Welcome, Steve—and thanks for your help! (And if you get a chance, do check out his books. I recently enjoyed Only the Broken Remain by Dan Coxon.)
No summation of the year would be complete without acknowledging the rest of the Swan River team: Meggan Kehrli, who does all our design work; and Jim Rockhill and Timothy J. Jarvis, both of whom help with the editorial and proofreading duties, not to mention general advice and support. I’d also like to thank John Howard, Joe Mitchen, Alison Lyons of Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, and John Connolly (check out his new anthology Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction), all of whom continue to give their support, encouragement, and enthusiasm for our work.
This year has been difficult for many, and I’ve had a lot of books and media to keep me company lately. I’d like to give a shout out to the creatives that I’ve been enjoying lately. Maybe you’ll find something new and interesting: Tartarus Press, Zagava, Ritual Limited, Egaeus Press, Sarob Press, Side Real Press, Black Shuck Books, Supernatural Tales, Hellebore, Nunkie Productions, Eibonvale Press, Undertow Publications, Nightjar Press, Friends of Arthur Machen—all of these people are doing the sort of things that I love, so be sure to give them your support if you find something new and exciting. Not to mention the many booksellers out there who stock our books—and even if they don’t, be sure to support your favourite local, independent bookseller. Choose to put your money into their pockets instead of Am*zon’s, because it really does make a difference.
Lastly, thank you to everyone who supported Swan River Press this year: with kind words, by buying books, donating through our patron programme, or simply spreading the word—I’m grateful for it all! If you’d like to keep in touch, do join our mailing list, find us on Facebook, follow on Twitter and Instagram. We’ve got some exciting projects for next year that I’m looking forward to sharing with you all. Until then, please stay healthy; take care of each other and your communities. I’d like to wish you all a restful holiday season, and hope to hear from you in the New Year!
The Green Book 18
Editor’s Note
Buy a copy of The Green Book 18
This issue is another selection of profiles from our tentatively named Guide to Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. The keen-eyed will spot one name that might seem out of place: Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Clarke, of course, was not a writer, but an artist who worked in watercolour, pen and ink, and stained glass. As an illustrator, Clarke put his indelible mark on literature of the macabre and fantastic. His best-known illustrations are those accompanying Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919/23), though his illustrations for Andersen, Perrault, and Swinburne also bear hallmarks of the strange. So too do goblins and grotesques leer from the corners of his stained glass work. Writing in The Irish Statesman on Clarke’s illustrations for Goethe’s Faust, the poet A.E. was clearly taken with the artist’s power:
“Nothing in these drawings represents anything in the visible world: all come from that dread mid-world or purgatory of the soul where forms change on the instant by evil or beautiful imagination, where the human image becomes bloated and monstrous by reason of lust or hate, the buttocks become like those of a fat swine, and thoughts crawl like loathsome puffy worms out of their cells in the skull. Shapeless things gleam with the eye of a snake . . . Here the black night is loaded with corrupt monstrosities, creatures distorted by lusts which obsess them, which bloat out belly or thighs, suck in the forehead, make the face a blur of horrid idiocy or a malignant lunacy. We shiver at the thought that creatures like these may lurk in many a brain masked from us by the divine image.” (14 November 1925)
It is all the more pitiable that Clarke never illustrated an edition of Dracula—he was unable to come to an agreement with Bram Stoker’s estate. What we are left with is not only a remarkable body of work, but also hints to what might have been: other unrealised projects include Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal and Huysmans’ À Rebours.
Clarke is rightfully listed in Jack Sullivan’s Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986), and so I felt, given his impact on macabre literature, it was only proper to feature a profile of this remarkable artist among our own pages. Naturally, you’ll find a Clarke illustration on the cover of this issue, and his “Mephisto” can be found on the cover of Issue 6.
This issue also features profiles on George Croly—whose Salathiel may well have borne influence on Stoker’s Dracula (see also “Who Marvels at the Mysteries of the Moon” in The Green Book 14)—and a much-anticipated entry on Fitz-James O’Brien, who is surely a pillar of Irish genre fiction; while Yeats and Lady Gregory invoke in their words the long shadow of the Celtic Twilight. As always, I hope you’ll discover writers who might be lesser known, like the Banims and the Barlowes, or those whose contributions to genre might be unexpected, such as the Longfords and Iris Murdoch. Whatever the case, I hope you find new and exciting avenues to explore.
Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
1 August 2021
You can buy The Green Book here.
Want to catch up on back issues? We have a special offer.
Contents
“Editor’s Note”
Brian J. Showers
“George Croly (1780-1860)”
Paul Murray
“Michael and John Banim (1796-1874/1798-1842)”
James Doig
“Anna Maria Hall (1800-1881)”
James Doig
“James William Barlow (1826-1913)”
Jack Fennell
“Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-1862)”
Richard Bleiler
“Lady Gregory (1852-1932)”
James Doig
“Jane Barlow (1856-1917)”
Jack Fennell
“W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)”
R. B. Russell
“Harry Clarke (1889-1931)”
R. B. Russell
“Christine and Edward Longford (1900-1980/1902-1961)”
Reggie Chamberlain-King
“Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)”
Miles Leeson
“Notes on Contributors”
“How I Write My Books”
An Interview with L. T. Meade
Despite her wide contributions to genre literature, Irish author L. T. Meade is now remembered, if at all, for her girls’ school stories. However, in 1898 the Strand Magazine, famous for its fictions of crime, detection, and the uncanny, proclaimed Meade one of its most popular writers for her contributions to its signature fare. Her stories, widely published in popular fin de siècle magazines, included classic tales of the supernatural, but her specialty was medical or scientific mysteries featuring doctors, scientists, occult detectives, criminal women with weird powers, unusual medical interventions, fantastic scientific devices, murder, mesmerism, and manifestations of insanity. Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures is the first collection to showcase the best of her pioneering strange fiction.
Mrs. L. T. Meade has probably written a greater number of stories than any other living author. A healthy tone pervades all her works, and her pictures of English home life in particular are among the best of their kind. Calling on the novelist (writes our Special Commissioner) at her City office, I found her at her desk hard at work. Her personality is like her writings—bright, fresh, vivacious; and to say that she is of a well-favoured countenance is to understate the fact. She retains much of her girlish appearance, though a rather worn look about the eyes suggests midnight oil and an ever-active brain. Knowing how Mrs. Meade values her time, I plunged at once into the subject of my visit by remarking that nowadays people take a very friendly interest in those who delight and instruct them by their writings, they like to know how their favourite books are written; and asked whether she was willing to satisfy this natural curiosity.
“I shall be happy to tell you anything you want to know,” she replied in a soft, musical voice. “As to how my books are written, well, I simply get a thought and work it out. I have no particular method of writing. My stories grow a good deal as I write them. I don’t think the plot out very carefully in advance. My children’s stories, for instance, before they are written, are, as a rule, first told to my own children to amuse them—at least, I have tried that plan since the children have become old enough to be interested in them, and I have found it very successful; as a rule, what one child likes, another child will like. I write my stories a good deal because the publisher wants the book; I simply write it to order, and, of course, if he asks for a girl’s story he gets it, and if he asks for a novel or children’s story he gets that. I may say that I am a very quick writer; I produce four or five books in a season. I have written in less than three months a rather important three-volume novel.”
“Do you ever take your characters from real life?”
“Yes, but not intentionally. I don’t deliberately say I will put such a character here or there; I take traits rather than a whole character. I find that deliberately setting my mind to delineate a certain character produces considerable stiffness, and the character is not so fresh. Authors are a good deal governed by their characters in writing fiction. If your book is to be successful, your characters guide you rather than you guide your characters; they are so very living and real that you have not complete control over them.”
“Your experience, then, is similar to that of Charles Dickens and some living writers, who have stated that their characters become their masters, and, as it were, take their destiny into their own hands?”
“Exactly. I find it a good plan, when a novel is in process, after a certain stage, to cut out every character that is not intensely alive. I am now speaking, of course, of my larger stories; in a short story there is not room for development of character.”
“May I ask how many stories you have written?”
“I am afraid to tell you—between fifty and sixty volumes, besides a great many short stories. I have been writing now constantly for fifteen years. An enormous quantity to have produced?—so it is; I don’t know any other author who has done so much work as I have done in that time. I will give you an example. I have recently brought out four volumes (none cheaper than 3s. 6d., which gives you some idea of the size) and a three-volume novel, not to mention a complete Christmas number of the Sunday Magazine, of nearly sixty thousand words. They have certainly all been written under two years. I write on an average every day in the year a little over two thousand words; on some occasions I wrote a great deal more.”
“Do you write everything with your own hand?”
“I write nothing with my own hand—I almost forget how to write. I employ a short-hand writer, and I revise the type-written transcript.”
“Do you write at regular hours or at uncertain intervals; in other words, do you wait for an inspiration, or do you sit down and write whether you feel inclined for it or not?”
“I never wait for an inspiration.” Mrs. Meade added, with a laugh, “I might never write at all if I did. I write every day at a certain hour, and it would be impossible for me to write in the way you suggest. I have a great many books promised against a certain time. I always write against time.”
“And you find that your work does not suffer from that somewhat mechanical method?”
“I don’t think it does. I believe that to write against time puts your work into a frame, and is improved by it. To have to write a certain length, and for a certain publisher, who requires a certain kind of work, is splendid practice; it makes your brain very supple, so that you can turn to anything. It is a matter of habit with me now, and I rather like it.”
“Are you never at a loss for ideas when working under such pressure? Don’t you ever feel impoverished?”
“Sometimes, perhaps; but not as a rule. I often sit down, my secretary has a blank sheet of paper, I say, ‘Chapter I’ and that is all I know when I begin. I suppose my ideas do flow very rapidly, for some writers who are very much beyond me in power can’t write quickly. They have to think out their subjects a great deal. I could not write if I gave much labour to my work.”
“But surely you must sometimes stop and think when you are dictating?”
“No; as a rule, I dictate straight ahead continuously, and never pause for an instant. I see the whole scene, and I talk on as I see it.”
I could not help feeling that, if Mrs. Meade dictates as rapidly as she was speaking to me, her stenographer must be exceptionally expert. Her readiness and fluency were such, that of all the people I have interviewed, not one covered so much ground in so short a time. To this hard-working novelist our conversation was but a momentary interruption.
“Then you create as you speak?”
“Yes. Of course all writers must feel they do better work one day than another, but there is no day I don’t write except Sunday. Atalanta takes up a great deal of time; more than half my days are occupied with it. I have a very large life outside my books.”
A portrait of a sturdy, happy-looking youngster in cricketing costume, which his mother showed me, was an illustration in point. Mrs. Meade told me that he was the original of Daddy’s Boy—one of the most fascinating of her numerous children’s tales.
“What do you think of our English fiction of to-day?” I next inquired.
“I think fiction is at a very low ebb just now. We have no giants; but the average writer has come to a much higher pitch of excellence than was the case ten or twelve years ago. I admire Barrie immensely. I think I like him almost better than Rudyard Kipling, but I have a great admiration for both in their way. Mr. Kipling has more sting than Mr. Barrie, but Mr. Barrie’s character-drawing is inimitable. Mr. Barrie, Mr. Kipling, and Mr. Stevenson ranks first of all.”
“Still, none of them, you think, are ‘giants’?”
“I would not put them on a level with George Eliot, or Thackeray, or Dickens. We have no Dickens now, no Thackeray, no George Eliot; we have not even a Bulwer-Lytton.”
“Would you put George Eliot at the head of all women novelists?”
“Yes. I don’t think anybody else has touched her. I think Charlotte Brontë has exceeded her in some things—she has more passion; but, on the whole, I think George Eliot is greater.”
“What is your opinion of the theological novel?”
“Frankly, I don’t care for it. Edna Lyall has made a great success, and done some very fine and noble work, but I think theology in a novel is a mistake. It might be introduced, but ought not to be overdone.”
“It is bad artistically, don’t you think?”
“Extremely bad; absolutely wrong. I think Mrs. Humphrey Ward is not at all artistic. She is a remarkably clever woman, but she is not a fictionist. A fictionist is in her own way a painter; she writes pictures instead of painting them. I think the art of fiction is not half studied by writers; there is so much in it.”
“Do you do most of your work at home, or here in the City?”
“I write in the morning at my own house at Dulwich. I do most of my original work at home, and my editorial work here, though I have done a great deal of original work here also. I don’t go by any fixed rule. The only fixed rule in my life is that I never can get a holiday.”
“I hope that is not to be taken literally?” “Well, we are going away to-morrow for three or four days. Such an event is so rare that I can hardly believe it is coming to pass. I never get more than about a fortnight’s holiday in the year. That is mostly because of my magazine work, which, of course, never ends.”
L. T. Meade (1844-1914) was born in Bandon, Co. Cork and started writing at an early age before establishing herself as one of the most prolific and bestselling authors of the day. In addition to her popular girls’ fiction, she also penned mystery stories, sensational fiction, romances, historical fiction, and adventure novels. Her notable works include A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), and The Sorceress of the Strand (1903). She died in Oxford on 26 October 1914.
Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures is now available in both paperback and limited edition hardback from Swan River Press as part of the Strange Stories by Irish Women series.
Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers
Earth-Bound and Other Supernatural Tales by Dorothy Macardle
Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time and Other Strange Stories by Rosa Mulholland
“Number Ninety” & Other Ghost Stories by B. M. Croker
The Death Spancel and Others by Katharine Tynan
Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures by L. T. Meade
Publication Delay
Update: All pre-orders and most contributor copies will be in the post by Friday, 4 June. Thank you again for your patience. – Brian
First of all, please let me apologise for the continued delay in shipping our three recent titles: The Fatal Move, Uncertainties 5, and The Green Book 17, which were supposed to have been delivered here in Dublin by our UK printed at the end of April.
The story briefly goes like this:
Delay #1: Printer broke down
Delay #2: Ran out of cloth for binding
Delay #3: Cloth needs more time to dry
Delay #4: I was informed I need an import number
Delay #5: Printer mistakenly bound in the wrong head/tailbands
Delay #6: Erroneously asked to pay import duty on VAT except items
At each of these delays I struggled no small amount to get the issue sorted. It’s taken me a week and a half to get these books out of customs. This is all mainly down to both Brexit and the printer in the UK putting down the wrong commodity code on the export paperwork. (I actually have to pay a new surcharge levied by the printer because of all the Brexit paperwork they need to fill out.)
So the good news is, the books arrived late this afternoon, despite the damaging hands of rough delivery.
What happens now? Well, I’m going to try to take off from work next week (I have a day job) so I can process your orders faster. I estimate it will take me a week and a half to get through everything and carry loads to the post office in batches (I don’t drive).
Please please please, I beg you, please don’t write to me asking if your book has shipped yet or to let you know when it does. I’ve quite a bit to juggle at the moment and such requests will slow me down in actually getting your book in the post as quickly as possible, which is my primary aim. And besides, knowing when your book was posted will not make it arrive any faster. On the other hand, if you’re going on holiday or something and want me to hold onto your book until you’re back to receive it, please let me know.
I’ve a lot of work ahead of me. Processing orders is an entire… well, it’s an entire process. I’ve got over 1,000 books here, each of which I need to first examine for defects, to weed out any that damaged or of lesser quality. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) at what sometimes turns up. Take, for example, this copy of The Green Book 17, first out of the box, with torn pages. Then I have to emboss and hand number both The Fatal Move and Uncertainties 5, taking note of requests for certain numbers–as well as numerous other special requests such as tracking numbers. All this simply takes time and I will work through it as swiftly as time allows.
Again, I apologise for this horrendously long wait for these book. It is certainly not up to my own standards and I hope this does not reflect badly on Swan River Press. However, I fear it will not be until later in June that you’ll actually see your book(s) showing up in the post. If this proves to be an inconvenience to anyone (if a book was meant as a gift for an occasion that’s now long passed), please drop me a line and I’ll be happy to issue a refund in full. In the meantime, and much to my regret and dismay, in addition to this work I also need to find a new printer, preferably one within the EU, who can work up to the standards of quality and service we’ve come to expect.
On a more positive note, the new hardbacks are printed on heavier paper stock, and you can definitely feel this added weight in your hands. The boards of both are also printed on cloth binding, which I hope you will also like. And The Fatal Move‘s jacket is printed with a nifty metallic ink. So despite these delays, once you do get the books, I’m certain you’ll be pleased with them.
Thank you again for your continued patience.
Brian J. Showers
27 May 2021
Addendum: So I trundle into the post office today thinking, gosh, the hard part is behind me now. As it turns out, postal prices went up significantly as of yesterday. I will honour all pre-orders and absorb the extra costs, but the prices of our books may have to be reviewed in the near future. Once again you have my sincere apologies. I will do my best to come up with an affordable balance.
Swan River Press Publishing Chronology
I’ve been spending the occasional odd moment assembling a Swan River Press bibliography. I started the press in 2003, so am getting to the point when I can no longer hold all the publishing details in my head. The bibliography (intended as a forthcoming publication) is meant as much a resource for me as I hope it will be of interest to readers, collectors, and bibliophiles. The book will contain my own notes on each publication as well as insights and reminiscences from authors, editors, and artists.
I think there’s a certain personality type that’s drawn to bibliographies; we possibly share some traits with list makers. Bibliographies can be highly personal things, how they’re compiled and arranged and organised. I love reading them and I love writing them. Bibliographies tell a different type of story than the ones we publish in our books. Bibliographies tell stories about the books and sometimes what happens off the page as well. If you’re of a sympathetic mindset, please leave a comment below. What information do you like to see in a bibliography? How do you like to see them arranged? Do you enjoy reading them as much as I do? Maybe you even consider yourself a serious Swan River Press collector? I’d love to hear from you all.
I’ll try to provide links to as many items as I can, though not every publication has it’s own page on the website, in which case you can find more information here (though you might have to scroll a bit to find the title in question). Or if you’re looking for The Green Book, then here.
In the meantime, I thought I would post this very basic publishing chronology. It doesn’t include any reprints or subsequent editions (although all those will eventually be noted in the bibliography). But this is the first time I’ve arranged all of the Swan River publications into chronological order. Reading between the lines, I can see the trajectory of my own life as well as the people and projects I have been privileged enough to participate in and publish. Sometimes it’s just good to take stock of these things, you know? For what it’s worth, I hope you enjoy this list.
2003
001. The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man (Oct. 2003)
———— Brian J. Showers
2004
002. The Snow Came Softly Down (Dec. 2004)
———— Brian J. Showers
2005
003. Tigh an Bhreithimh (Oct. 2005)
———— Brian J. Showers
2006
004. No. 70 Merrion Square: Part 1 (Oct. 2006)
———— Brian J. Showers
005. No. 70 Merrion Square: Part 2 (Dec. 2006)
———— Brian J. Showers
006. On the Apparitions at Gray’s Court (Dec. 2006)
———— Peter Bell
2007
007. Blind Man’s Box (Jun. 2007)
———— Reggie Oliver
008. The Red House at Münstereifel (Jul. 2007)
———— Helen Grant
009. Quis Separabit (Dec. 2007)
———— Brian J. Showers
2008
010. Brutal Spirits (Feb. 2008)
———— Gary McMahon
011. Ghostly Rathmines: A Visitor’s Guide (Mar. 2008)
———— Brian J. Showers
012. The Nanri Papers (Aug. 2008)
———— Edward Crandall
013. The Seer of Trieste (Dec. 2008)
———— Mark Valentine
2009
014. My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure (Jul. 2009)
———— attributed to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
015. Thirty Years A-Going (Oct. 2009)
———— Albert Power
2010
016. Four Romances (Jan. 2010)
———— Bram Stoker
017. On the Banks of the River Jordan (Mar. 2010)
———— John Reppion
018. Bram Stoker’s Other Gothics (Apr. 2010)
———— edited by Carol A. Senf
019. The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales (Sep. 2010)
———— Rosalie Parker
020. Extracts from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (Nov. 2010)
———— Bram Stoker
2011
021. Contemporary Reviews of “Dracula” (Jan. 2011)
———— introduction by Leah Moore and John Reppion
022. To My Dear Friend Hommy-Beg (Apr. 2011)
———— introduction by Richard Dalby
023. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: A Concise Bibliography (Jun. 2011)
———— Gary William Crawford and Brian J. Showers
024. The Ballads and Poems of J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Aug. 2011)
———— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
025. Curfew & Other Eerie Tales (Aug. 2011)
———— Lucy M. Boston
026. Just Like That (Aug. 2011)
———— Lucy M. Boston
027. The Complete Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (Oct. 2011)
———— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
028. The Definitive Judge’s House (Dec. 2011)
———— Bram Stoker
2012
029. Ghosts (Feb. 2012)
———— R. B. Russell
030. Laura Silver Bell (Feb. 2012)
———— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
031. Strange Epiphanies (Apr. 2012)
———— Peter Bell
032. Longsword (Jul. 2012)
———— Thomas Leland
033. Old Albert: An Epilogue (Sep. 2012)
———— Brian J. Showers
034. Selected Stories (Nov. 2012)
———— Mark Valentine
2013
035. The Sea Change & Other Stories (Feb. 2013)
———— Helen Grant
036. The Green Book 1 (Apr. 2013)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
037. Written by Daylight (June 2013)
———— John Howard
038. Seventeen Stories (Oct. 2013)
———— Mark Valentine
039. The Green Book 2 (Oct. 2013)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
2014
040. Here with the Shadows (Feb. 2014)
———— Steve Rasnic Tem
041. The Green Book 3 (Apr. 2014)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
042. The Dark Return of Time (May 2014)
———— R. B. Russell
043. The Silver Voices (Jul. 2014)
———— John Howard
044. Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J. S. Le Fanu (Aug. 2014)
———— edited by Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers
045. The Green Book 4 (Nov. 2014)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
046. Reminiscences of a Bachelor (Dec. 2014)
———— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
2015
047. The Unfortunate Fursey (Mar. 2015)
———— Mervyn Wall
048. The Return of Fursey (Mar. 2015)
———— Mervyn Wall
049. The Demon Angler & One Other (Mar. 2015)
———— Mervyn Wall
050. The Green Book 5 (Apr. 2015)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
051. The Satyr & Other Tales (Jul. 2015)
———— Stephen J. Clark
052. The Anniversary of Never (Aug. 2015)
———— Joel Lane
053. Insect Literature (Oct. 2015)
———— Lafcadio Hearn
054. The Green Book 6 (Oct. 2015)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
055. November Night Tales (Nov. 2015)
———— Henry C. Mercer
2016
056. The Green Book 7 (Mar. 2016)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
057. Earth-Bound and Other Supernatural Tales (May 2016)
———— Dorothy Macardle
058. The Pale Brown Thing (Jul. 2016)
———— Fritz Leiber
059. Uncertainties: Volume I (Aug. 2016)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
060. Uncertainties: Volume II (Aug. 2016)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
061. You’ll Know What You Get There (Aug. 2016)
———— Lynda E. Rucker
062. The Green Book 8 (Nov. 2016)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
2017
063. Selected Poems (Apr. 2017)
———— George William Russell (A.E.)
064. A Flutter of Wings (Aug. 2017)
———— Mervyn Wall
065. The Green Book 9 (Sep. 2017)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
066. Old Hoggen and Other Adventures (Nov. 2017)
———— Bram Stoker
067. The Scarlet Soul: Stories for Dorian Gray (Dec. 2017)
———— edited by Mark Valentine
068. The Green Book 10 (Dec. 2017)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
2018
069. Death Makes Strangers of Us All (Feb. 2018)
———— R. B. Russell
070. The House on the Borderland (April 2018)
———— William Hope Hodgson
071. The Dummy & Other Uncanny Stories (May 2018)
———— Nicholas Royle
072. Sparks from the Fire (June 2018)
———— Rosalie Parker
073. Uncertainties: Volume III (Sep. 2018)
———— edited by Lynda E. Rucker
074. The Green Book 11 (Nov. 2018)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
075. The Green Book 12 (Nov. 2018)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
2019
076. Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women (Mar. 2019)
———— edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers
077. Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time and Other Strange Stories (Apr. 2019)
———— Rosa Mulholland
078. A Flowering Wound (Jul. 2019)
———— John Howard
079. The Green Book 13 (Jul. 2019)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
080. “Number Ninety” & Other Ghost Stories (Aug. 2019)
———— B. M. Croker
081. Green Tea (Oct. 2019)
———— Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
082. The Far Tower: Stories for W. B. Yeats (Dec. 2019)
———— edited by Mark Valentine
2020
083. Uncertainties: Volume IV (Feb. 2020)
———— edited by Timothy J. Jarvis
084. Lucifer and the Child (Apr. 2020)
———— Ethel Mannin
085. The Green Book 14 (Jun. 2020)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
086. The Green Book 15 (Jun. 2020)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
087. Munky (Jul. 2020)
———— B. Catling
088. Leaves for the Burning (Sep. 2020)
———— Mervyn Wall
089. The Green Book 16 (Sep. 2020)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
090. The Death Spancel and Others (Nov. 2020)
Katharine Tynan
091. Ghosts of the Chit-Chat (Dec. 2020)
———— edited by Robert Lloyd Parry
2021
092. The Fatal Move (Apr. 2021)
———— Conall Cearnach
093. Uncertainties: Volume V (Apr. 2021)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
094. The Green Book 17 (Apr. 2021)
———— edited by Brian J. Showers
Conall Cearnach’s “The Fatal Move”
A few years back I wrote a short piece on how we put together Lafcadio Hearn’s Insect Literature (2015) from a design point of view. There are often embedded design details of significance in our books—the sort of things you might not notice until they’re pointed out and the various meanings explained. With the imminent publication of The Fatal Move by Conall Cearnach, I thought it might be a good time to write another such essay looking at how we designed this particular book.
Irish author F. W. O’Connell (1875-1929)—who often published as “Conall Cearnach”—was brought to my attention by Reggie Chamberlain-King, probably sometime in 2017. Chamberlain-King had been pitching to me Irish writers to consider for The Green Book’s ongoing profile series “Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural, and Fantastic Literature”, and Cearnach was among them. You can read the resulting biographical overview in Issue 11.
During his lifetime, Cearnach was known as the author of two Irish grammar books, A Grammar of Old Irish (1912) and Irish Self-Taught (1923), as well as for his broadcasts on 2RN, Ireland’s first radio broadcasting system. (It’s these broadcasts that I suspect formed the contents of Cearnach’s three essay collections.) But the primary reason for Cearnach being considered an Irish fantasist in The Green Book is for a slim collection of short stories he published in 1924: The Fatal Move and Other Stories (M. H. Gill & Son, Dublin). Chamberlain-King describes the stories as “ranging from the darkly macabre, to the speculative, to the absurd”. I had to track down a copy.
When the slim volume arrived—the first edition is only 96 pages—I was even more intrigued by the story titles: “The Vengeance of the Dead”, “The Homing Bone”, “Professor Danvers’ Disappearance” . . . I found among them a supernatural thriller, a locked-room mystery, a conte cruel, and even a “delightfully comic dystopia” in which Bolshevik Russia had taken over England, wiping out the English language. Eventually I reprinted “The Fiend that Walks Behind”, a Jamesian ghost story, in The Green Book 15, where it drew a favourable response. I grew to quite love this quirky little book, perhaps not a lost classic, but certainly a quirky gem of Irish literature, which I decided was worthy of inclusion in our 2021 publishing schedule. Naturally, Reggie Chamberlain-King provided the introduction, greatly expanded from his previous profile in The Green Book, and probably the lengthiest piece written about Cearnach to date.
So back to the book itself: the first edition copy of The Fatal Move that I managed to track down was complete with a somewhat grubby (and fragile) fawn paper wrapper. Depicted on the cover in green ink were two weary chess players, one slumped over their game board, both overseen by the disembodied head of an Edwardian beauty with red pupils—all this being an illustration from the title story.
While the name of the artist is neither listed in the book, nor in any bibliography I could find, my own copy bore two interesting inscriptions on the front endpaper. At the top, in black ink: “To the Artist with the Publisher’s Compliments, Dec. 1923”; below that, in red ink: “From Tom Grogan, as a specimen of his productions, le hárd-cion [with great affection]”. Certainly this established the identity of the artist, but begged the further question: Who exactly was Tom Grogan? A “Father Thomas Grogan” is registered at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1919, and is a possible candidate, but apart from that the trail is cold. Any amateur art sleuths out there want to take up the challenge?
I noticed something else while putting together The Fatal Move. The eyes of the woman on the jacket are blank on all the other copies I was seeing for sale on the internet. Mine would seem to be unique with its crimson glare, which, until this realisation I had thought was part of the original design as opposed to added. Some of you might already have made the next leap in logic, but I confess, it took me a moment before I got there: the red ink with which Tom Grogan made his inscription is the same ink used on the jacket to enhance the eyes. In other words, the cover of my copy was embellished by the artist himself.
Usually when we reprint a book, I like to commission a new piece of art so as to modernise the edition—though always with sympathy to the text’s history, of course. But for The Fatal Move we decided to retain Tom Grogan’s original artwork, though not without a handful of minor alterations. First, you’ll notice that the letters in Conall Cearnach’s name are crowded together on the cover of first edition. I asked our designer Meggan Kehrli if she could fix this, which she did beautifully, rendering the author’s name more clearly. Next, we decided to print the image in a metallic green ink, which should give the jacket a striking look (Pantone PMS 8722C, for those who like knowing this sort of thing). The book isn’t back from the printer yet, but I hope it looks good. Finally, we decided, for our new edition, to retain Tom Grogan’s red eye embellishment, an indelible addition to my own original copy, now embedded in Swan River’s updated design. We hope Tom Grogan would approve.
As for the pattern we’re printing on the book’s case, Meggan lifted that from Cearnach’s essay collection The Age of Whitewash (1921). This also seems appropriate as Chamberlain-King wanted to include in The Fatal Move a selection of the author’s more outré non-fiction, hoping to give more insight into Cearnach’s life and milieu. Using the pattern from The Age of Whitewash is a subtle nod to this consideration.
And there you have it—a bit of insight into what goes into putting together the book as a physical object, readying the stories so that a new readership might discover them. I’m excited to see what the book will finally look like when it arrives back from the printer within the next few days. Our limited edition hardback edition will be the first time The Fatal Move has been reprinted since it’s first outing in 1924—nearly one hundred years ago.
So have you ordered a copy yet? Have you read Cearnach already? Or maybe there’s something else about this book you’d like to know more about? Drop us a line or leave your comments below.
If you liked this essay and want to support an independent Irish press:
Order The Fatal Move by Conall Cearnach.
THE GREEN BOOK 17
EDITOR’S NOTE
As it turned out, Issue 15, which was comprised entirely of fiction, proved to be quite popular. So I had a look in my files to see if I could put together another such issue of refugee writings that did not fit elsewhere in our publishing schedule.
Let the curtains rise on Oscar Wilde’s “The Harlot’s House”, first published in The Dramatic Review (11 April 1885), which publisher Leonard Smither’s notes is “not included in the edition of his collected Poems”—I assume a reference to the volume issued by Elkin Mathews and John Lane in 1892. While “The Harlot’s House” has since become available, we would like to present it here as Leonard Smithers had in a portfolio edition in 1904: with five “weirdly powerful and beautiful” drawings by Althea Gyles, known for her lavish cover designs for Yeats’s poetry collections, including The Secret Rose (1897), two covers for The Wind Among the Reeds (1899/1990), and Poems (1900). We will explore more fully this remarkable artist in a future issue of The Green Book.
H. de Vere Stacpoole’s “The Mask”, a deft little shocker set in the Carpathian Mountains, had previously a couple of outings in 1930s anthologies, including My Grimmest Nightmare (1935) and Not Long for This World (1936). While de Vere Stacpoole is best known for his popular novel The Blue Lagoon (1908), his career is sprinkled with tales of the macabre. A profile of his life and writings can be found in Issue 12.
Next is Herbert Moore Pim’s “The Ravished Bride”, a gothic narrative in verse set in the north of Ireland, and quite unlike the stories found in his oddball collection Unknown Immortals of the Northern City of Success (1917). You’ll find his story, “The Madman” in Issue 15, while a full profile of this quixotic author is in Issue 12.
After this we have two stories by Katharine Tynan, neither of which have been reprinted before. We considered both when compiling The Death Spancel and Others, which Swan River published in late 2020, but ultimately decided they wouldn’t strengthen that volume. We rejected “The Heart of the Maze” because it is simply not a supernatural tale; however, it does possess dream-like and faerie tale-type qualities not atypical of Tynan’s work. The second story, “The House of a Dream”, while it does contain psychical elements, we deemed far too similar in plot to “The Dream House”, the latter of which we did include in The Death Spancel. As a commercial writer, Tynan reused plots and themes to keep up with the demands of the fiction markets. Despite this pace, her writing remained of the highest quality: elegant, descriptive, and a pleasure to read.
Following the two stories by Tynan you’ll find three poems by Dora Sigerson Shorter, all of which were selected by Margaret Widdemar for her anthology The Haunted Hour (1920), a volume that also included contributions from Yeats, Tynan, and Walter de la Mare. Widdemar takes for her strict definition of a “ghost-poem” as “poems which relate to the return of spirits to earth”. Sigerson Shorter’s poems deftly evoke a night-time Ireland populated by revenants and other wandering ill-omens, such as the fetch and the banshee. If you want to learn more about Sigerson Shorter’s life and work you can read about her in Issue 13; her remarkable story “Transmigration” can be found in Swan River’s Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women (2019).
Finally we have “To Prove an Alibi” by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, a tale of mystery and terror reminiscent of Wilkie Collins’s “A Terribly Strange Bed” (1852). This story is one in a series to feature John Bell, later collected as A Master of Mysteries (1898). Bell is a “professional exposer of ghosts” whose business is to “clear away the mysteries of most haunted houses” and to “explain by the application of science, phenomena attributed to spiritual agencies”. More on Meade can be found in The Green Book 16; we will be seeing more from her soon.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, another issue of weird, gothic, and macabre poems and stories from Irish writers. I write this on Saint Patrick’s Day, under a clear blue sky in Dublin; and I hope some of the convivial cheer and goodwill of the day reaches you as you read this issue.
Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
17 March 2021
You can buy The Green Book here.
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Contents
“Editor’s Note”
Brian J. Showers
“The Harlot’s House”
Oscar Wilde with Althea Gyles
“The Mask”
H. de Vere Stacpoole
“The Ravished Bride”
Herbert Moore Pim
“The Heart of the Maze”
Katharine Tynan
“The House of a Dream”
Katharine Tynan
“All-Souls’ Night”
Dora Sigerson Shorter
“The Fetch”
Dora Sigerson Shorter
“The Banshee”
Dora Sigerson Shorter
“To Prove an Alibi”
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
“Notes on Contributors”
“That Didn’t Scare Me”: Thoughts on Horror Fiction
“Horror is not a genre like the mystery or science fiction or the western
. . . Horror is an emotion.” – Douglas E. Winter
“That didn’t scare me.” This level of criticism grates my sensibilities. That didn’t scare me. It’s the sort of comment you overhear when leaving the cinema or that you might witness among a torrent of social-media posts, not generally known for their insight or elucidation in the first place. It’s not even the brevity of this comment that bothers me, but rather that this grunt seems to convey a shallow understanding of horror: “That didn’t scare me.”
As a life-long connoisseur of horror, I seldom experience genuine “fear” while reading (or viewing)—that adrenaline-fuelled dread termed “art-horror” by Noel Carroll in The Philosophy of Horror. It does happen to me on occasion though, this sense of frisson: I remember the worrying, childhood anxiety of the doomsday clock in John Bellairs’s The House with a Clock in Its Walls, that horrible cosmic grandeur I experienced the first time I turned the pages of William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland, or the overbearing sense of inexorable supernatural fate in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.
But if invoking this feeling of fear is such a rare experience—a sort of holy grail of reader reaction—then you might rightly wonder why I carry on exploring this particular section of the library? Am I not effectively one among the crowd, professing with a sneer, that didn’t scare me? It’s a reasonable question. Put another way: If horror doesn’t get you scared, then what are you getting?
In his introduction to the anthology Prime Evil (1988), editor Douglas E. Winter makes an observation, often repeated, what he calls “an important bit of heresy”: “Horror is not a genre like the mystery or science fiction or the western . . . Horror is an emotion.” This is a good place to start: horror is an emotion, and so the success or failure of horror literature is predicated on eliciting an emotional sensation in the reader. Similar to how a joke might be deemed a success or failure depending on the laughs. But there’s got to be more to it than that.
Consider a grand piano, onyx black, appropriately festooned with cobwebs and candelabra bedecked with dripping red candles. Imagine being allowed to play only one note, probably down the far left end of the instrument where the theme from Jaws is usually played. Now imagine that the sole way to enhance the effectiveness of this note is to hammer that one key harder and harder. For many, this is horror. Hammering that single key. Lots of people love that one pounding note too, and feel cheated if they don’t get that adrenaline rush; that didn’t scare me. Sure, that single note might be novel for a moment, sometimes even effective in a particular context, as the musician changes speed or intensity. But you’ll forgive me if I tend to feel overwhelmingly bored with this sort of concert.
“Horror is an emotion,” Douglas E. Winter tells us. I would respectfully like to amend that assertion. Horror is a range of emotions. And each of these moods, if they are to be successful, must be cultivated differently. We know that good horror is rarely just a single note. There are far more keys on that piano—and they’re all elegantly tuned. To borrow the subtitle of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, the genre is eine Symphonie des Grauens—a symphony of horrors.
There seems to have been a proliferation of horror-related literary descriptors in the early- to mid-twentieth century (or at least an increasingly formalised awareness of them): cosmic, weird, numinous, uncanny, strange, among others. I believe these words are of merit, not because they define sub-genres, but because they reflect attempts to describe particular nuances of affect (emotional responses) to be found in the “ghost story”—the dominant mode of horror in the late nineteenth century, itself rooted in the gothic tradition. Despite the common trope of the wailing bedsheet, the ghost story has always been quite diverse and adaptable. As is occasionally observed, the “ghosts” in the works of M. R. James are often not ghosts at all, but demons and other such denizens; while the stories of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Henry James practically beg for the qualifier “psychological” so as to set them apart from the less imaginative chain-rattling fare. And yet, even though Algernon Blackwood himself called “The Willows” a ghost story, that attribution would seem a wholly inadequate description for the troubling sentiments that masterful tale evokes. Who can blame Lovecraft for writing an entire treatise pondering the aesthetics of the weird or Robert Aickman for labouring the strange?
This attempt to describe dominant effects found in horror storytelling continues apace; sometimes these descriptions are celebrated, other times they’re inelegantly stated, occasionally there’s some sort of backlash. Current nomenclature includes “quiet horror” or “elevated horror”, “horror adjacent”, “new horror”, and the ostensibly respectable “thriller”. But surely horror means horror. It doesn’t need your fancy terms. Perhaps the worry is that defining a “sub-genre” will limit creativity, possibly that it’s just a marketing ploy, or, worse still, a declaration of vogueishness, a demonstration of an otherwise unspoken desire to be au courant. Or maybe outsiders discovering good horror ruin the mystique of the insular and supposedly marginalised horror geek who has been reading Thomas Ligotti this whole time anyway.
As someone who thinks often about the mechanics of horror storytelling, it makes sense to me that we recognise and try to describe the wide-ranging nuances of emotional sensations available to writers of horror. I believe understanding this diversity makes horror literature a stronger, richer, and more enjoyable pursuit.
Over the years I’ve written down some words that I’ve come to associate with the various emotional resonances found in horror literature. Take a moment to read through them. Think about stories you’ve read that evoke these sensations to varying degrees of success, and how these ideas differ from one another:
Strange
Weird
Dread
Uncanny
Eerie
Wonder
Awe
Decadence
Terror
Occult
Despair
Numinous
Epiphany
Nihilistic
Cosmic
Psychical
Mysterious
Gothic
Melancholy
Unreal
Surreal
Disquietude
Morbid
Oneiric
Mystical
Supernatural
Sublime
Grotesque
Unease
Paranoia
Revulsion
I have not attempted to arrange these words in any sort of order. I’m not sure I would know how. Nor would I feel confident to state that this list is complete; no doubt you can think of more. Call these words what you’d like—sub-genres, modes, atmospheres, moods, sensibilities—but they all describe, directly or indirectly, discreet emotional sensations that a skilled writer can elicit from a reader. It also stands to reason that this variety of effects requires a broad range of appreciative sensibilities—though I understand that not everyone will respond equally to each of these words. Still, there are plenty of emotional sensations available to the skilled writer, the adrenaline rush of fear being only one of them. And this sensation alone is insufficient to judge the vast scope of horror. So much for “That didn’t scare me”.
Numerous essayists over the centuries have attempted to define some of these modes, to delineate their core attributes and limits. Anne Radcliffe made an early attempt at that classic bifurcation, differentiating terror and horror: “the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them”; to these twin poles, Stephen King added revulsion (the “gross-out”, he called it). Thomas Burke gives us the sublime, when “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it”; while Freud sets out a reasonable starting point for the uncanny (“that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar”).
Though the weird is often associated with Lovecraft’s examination of supernatural horror in literature, I like Mark Fisher’s more recent philosophical definition in The Weird and the Eerie: “that which does not belong”; and of the eerie: the “failure of absence” or the “failure of presence”. (Fisher also helpfully tells us that the weird and the eerie need not necessarily be aligned with fear either, thank you very much.) The well-known rules for the ghost story proper were set out by M. R. James; so too does Edith Wharton give insight in her preface to Ghosts: “What the ghost really needs is continuity and silence”—although she also notes, “the more one thinks the question over, the more one perceives the impossibility of defining supernatural events”.
It’s true that many have tried to put words to these nuanced facets of horror. Certainly, some overlap or work in tandem, while others command entirely recognisable sub-genres on their own. We can look to Arthur Machen for the mystical (“Omnia exeunt in mysterium”), to Aickman for the strange (“it must open a door where no one had previously noticed a door to exist”), or to Joyce Carol Oates for the grotesque (“a blunt physicality that no amount of epistemological exegesis can exorcise”). There are whole books written on the subject by Dorothy Scarborough, Montague Summers, Peter Penzoldt, Devendra P. Varma, Julia Briggs, Jack Sullivan, Glen Cavaliero, S. T. Joshi—you may not always agree with their conclusions (isn’t that half the fun anyway?), but all are attempting to give names to the various effects a “horror” story can elicit.
Which brings us to the present volume, the fifth in a series of unsettling tales. Believe it or not, Uncertainties is a themed anthology. The remit was nothing so superficial as vampires or zombies or folk horror or Cthulhu (only in dustbowl Oklahoma this time), but rather to exhibit horror’s myriad nuances, to open up strange vistas of unsettling possibilities and other-worldly ideas, to commune with intrusions from the outside and those disquieting gestations from within. “Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write—least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these twelve writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities.
Algernon Blackwood put it well in “The Willows”, a story that’s caused me many sleepless nights in terrible awe of the unknown: “ ‘There are things about us, I’m sure, that make for disorder, disintegration, destruction, our destruction,’ he said once, while the fire blazed between us. ‘We’ve strayed out of a safe line somewhere.’ ”
So you can call these stories whatever you’d like: weird, strange, eerie, uncanny . . . I call them Uncertainties.
Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
24 February 2021
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Brian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, Ghosts & Scholars, and Supernatural Tales. His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse, won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (2006), the co-editor of Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2011), and the editor of The Green Book. Showers also edited the first two volumes of Uncertainties, and co-edited with Jim Rockhill, the Ghost Story Award-winning anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Previous volumes of Uncertainties are also available:
Uncertainties Volume 4, edited by Timothy J. Jarvis
Uncertainties Volume 3, edited by Lynda E. Rucker
Uncertainties Volume 2, edited by Brian J. Showers
Uncertainties Volume 1, edited by Brian J. Showers
Swan River Press 