The Green Book 25 - J Sheridan Le Fanu Rarities

  

Swan River Press have just announced the latest issue of their journal The Green Book, Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, and this time it is devoted to J Sheridan Le Fanu, offering several rarities by and about him. 

These include a rediscovered monograph memoir of the author written by his publisher, and introduced by Jim Rockhill, and an essay by Martin Voracek about a 1942 German language sequel to 'Green Tea'. There is also a completely overlooked poem by Le Fanu, and an essay by him on Chapelizod, together with a note by Albert Power about the author's association with this quarter of Dublin. Jim Rockhill also writes on 'False Ghosts and Spurious Le Fanu'. 

As ever, The Green Book is essential for any reader or scholar interested in Irish literature or the literature of the fantastic.

Reading the Signs: In Conversation with John Kenny about 'Lost Estates'

At the Swan River Press blog, a conversation with writer and editor John Kenny about my latest short story collection, Lost Estates. Our conversation touches on borderland and otherworld fiction, the art of wandering, General Gordon, how history and legends intertwine, landscape mysteries, inn signs, wild topiary and much else. Thanks to John for his enjoyable questions. John has also reviewed the book at his personal blog.

(Mark Valentine)

Lost Estates - a new short story collection

Swan River Press have just announced pre-orders for my new short story collection Lost Estates and Other Stories. This collects twelve tales, four of them previously unpublished, with several others now only available in this volume. In all the stories, scholarly, bookish or bohemian characters encounter the uncanny or otherworldly,

The new stories depict a book-collector who follows a sign to Brazen Serpent Books; the secret of a lost pamphlet and the man who sang ‘The Laughing Policeman’; a scholar of inn signs who finds some have escaped into the English landscape; and the reunion of The Perpetual Motion Machine Company.

Two long stories, first published by Sarob, evoke antiquarian mysteries: a manor held on condition of playing a king at chess (but which king?), and the secret of King John’s treasure, which may not be quite what it seems. 

The remaining stories, mostly out of print, first appeared in anthologies and journals. They explore the patterns seen in the sands of a great estuary; an eerie street game in Paris; the secret lore of a quiet cul-de-sac; the strange volumes received at the ancient Chaplain's Library; and an episode in the youth of Arthur Machen, involving the figure of General Gordon and the byways of London.  

Lost Estates and Other Stories is in a signed, limited, hardback edition of 450 copies, the first 100 of which are embossed and hand-numbered. Cover art by Jason Zerrillo; jacket design by Meggan Kehrli.

(Mark Valentine)

THE ANNIVERSARY OF NEVER - Joel Lane

The Swan River Press have announced the publication of a collection of stories by Joel Lane. The Anniversary of Never offers thirteen stories (one with Mat Joiner), with an introduction by Joel's long-time champion, Nicholas Royle.

The announcement tells us: "The Anniversary of Never is a group of tales concerned with the theme of the afterlife,” observed Lane, “and the idea that we may enter the afterlife before death, or find parts of it in our world.” These stories of love and death, sex and solitude, decay and dementia will burrow deep into the reader’s mind and impregnate it with a vision often as bleak as the night is black."

It was a great privilege to know Joel and to publish some of his early stories in Aklo, the journal of the fantastic I co-edited with Roger Dobson. So I can't pretend to be objective here. For me, Joel Lane was one of the most thoughtful and questioning authors in the supernatural fiction field. Deeply versed in the traditions of the form - he contributed remarkably original and perceptive essays on many of its major figures to Wormwood - he also understood the need to give it a contemporary resonance.

His stories have all the brooding power of the most memorable classics, while also having an extra edge because they are about the world we live in now. They always make us think about that world, gently and allusively showing just how wrong things can be. But they are also movingly written meditations on perennial human concerns, in which fully real characters experience love, longing and loss. Joel's ghosts are the spirits of dust, empty houses, abandoned places, wastelands. Anyone who cares at all about modern dark fiction - or about our society today - needs to read his work.

Mark Valentine

The Silver Voices - John Howard

The Swan River Press has announced a new edition of The Silver Voices by Wormwood columnist and essayist John Howard, collecting seven stories set in the Transylvanian town of Steaua de Munte, hill of the stars, a place of several distinctive languages and cultures, and with its own unusual history and legends. As in his stories for Secret Europe, the volume conjures the atmosphere of the interwar era and its legacy with subtle understanding, in writing imbued with an austere clarity.

In an interview with Mat Joiner, John describes how his interest in such borderlands began when young. Picking up a school atlas, he recalls "being plunged into a world of shifting frontiers, with empires rising and falling in tides of different colours washing across the pages as I turned them, which were decades and centuries passing."

Though he often works within the classic tradition of supernatural fiction, he explains that while his stories may not be about conventional ghosts, they do evoke the metaphorical hauntings we all experience - "our obsessions and longings and fascinations and hates and dreads" - and adds, "I doubt we can ever entirely escape our ghosts, desirable as that might be, because that would mean escaping from a part of our very selves. But come to terms with them, yes."

J Sheridan Le Fanu - 200th Anniversary Tribute

The Swan River Press of Dublin has announced a tribute anthology to mark the 200th anniversary of J Sheridan Le Fanu's birth. Dreams of Shadow and Smoke, edited and introduced by Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers, will be published in August and collects ten new stories of the fantastic and macabre in the tradition of the Irish master. Contributors include Sarah Le Fanu, Peter Bell, Angela Slatter and Derek John: also included is my story "Seaweed Tea".

As I say in the note to my story, "J. Sheridan Le Fanu was the first ghost story writer in English after Poe to take the form seriously. He took it out of the realm of the folk ballad, the comic yarn and the stylised melodrama of the Gothic tale, into a new realm of literary subtlety. He also recognised its potential for exploring visionary experiences." This affectionate and original homage, beautifully designed, aspires to do justice to his stature.