Vivian Meik's DEVILS' DRUMS

Front cover of dust-wrapper

I'm very pleased to say that the expanded edition of Vivian Meik's Devils' Drums (originally published in 1933), which I finished eight years ago (for a different publisher), has now come out in a very attractive edition from Medusa Press.  Not only is the dust-wrapper attractive, but the design on the binding is as well, so I will show scans of both here. Meik's stories of central African voodoo are refreshingly different from most British horror fiction of the 1930s. One story from Devils’ Drums has been filmed. "The Doll of Death" was adapted for the television program, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Directed by John Badham, it was the second to last episode of the series, broadcast on 20 May 1973. 

This new edition is limited to 300 copies.  Order via the Medusa Press website.

Here is the table of contents:

INTRODUCTION – Douglas A. Anderson

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

I           DEVILS’ DRUMS

II         WHITE ZOMBIE

III        AN ACRE IN HELL

IV        THE DOLL OF DEATH

V         WHITE MAN’S LAW

VI        .  . .  L’AMITIÉ RESTE

VII      THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SHADOW

VIII     RA

IX        A HONEYMOON IN HATE

X         DOMIRA’S DRUM

ADDITIONAL STORIES:

XI        THE TWO OLD WOMEN

XII      CHIROMO

XIII     I LEAVE IT TO YOU

Spine and upper cover of binding

Medusa Press

For some years now Medusa Press has been quietly producing occasional volumes of weird fiction, nicely designed and of high production values. I believe their first book was Frank Chigas's The Damp Chamber and Other Bad Places (2004), and since then they have published two further collections of his work, and also branched out into reprinting older materials.


I was delighted with Left in the Dark: The Supernatural Tales of John Gordon, which came out in 2006, collecting nineteen stories from three of Gordon's earlier collections, plus ten hitherto uncollected stories and one story newly written for this volume.

Last year Medusa Press released a new edition of a 1920s novel of legendary rarity, Oliver Sherry's Mandrake (Jarrolds, 1929), with a new introduction by Richard Dalby.  Dalby tells us that "Oliver Sherry" was the pseudonym of an Irishman, George Edmund Lobo (1894-1971), a minor figure remembered primarily for his poetry.  Though published last fall, I learned of this reissue only recently, and now having a copy I observe that Medusa Press has made an especially elegant reissue, with a distinctive dust-wrapper design as well as a really cool binding underneath.  Good work like this should be noticed, so I copy the wrapper and binding below.  Order via the publisher's website.