The Centenary of the Book-publication of "The Haunted Woman" by David Lindsay

David Lindsay's second novel The Haunted Woman was serialized in The Daily News in August-September 1921.  I wrote about it here. 

Today, February 9th, 2022, marks the one hundredth anniversary of its publication in book form by Methuen of London.  The dust-wrapper is rather nondescript:

The sheets of the first edition were bound in over a dozen batches, the largest being the first. The are several variants in terms of cloth color and binding stampings, along with catalogues inserted (or not) at the rear. These happened between 1922 and 1926, after which the book went out of print. Here are the variants that, at present, I know of, in probable priority:

1) Brown cloth, stamped in blind on upper cover and in gold on spine. One copy seen without a publisher's catalogue, and another copy reported with an 8-page publisher's catalogue at rear.

2) Brown cloth, stamped in black on upper cover and spine. Reported without publisher's catalogue. 

3) Orange cloth, stamped in black on upper cover and spine. Some copies have an 8-page publisher's catalogue inserted at rear, dated "224" [i.e., February 1924] at the bottom of page 8.  Other copies have a similar publisher's catalogue with the date "425" [April 1925] at bottom of page 8. 

The orange cloth is generally considered to be a remainder binding, sold at a lower price. I present a small gallery below.

The book was not reprinted until January 1947, after Lindsay's death. Victor Gollancz's rather breathless blurb notes that some actually rank The Haunted Women in a higher class than A Voyage to Arcturus. Among the "some" that did, the major proponent of this minority viewpoint was E.H. Visiak.

The reviewer for the T.L.S. of 16 February 1922 clearly expected a different kind of book than the one that was read:

Unfortunately the reader will, we think, feel that he is not quite sufficiently carried out of himself by that sense of the supernatural, which it is the essence of all good ghost stories to create.

The book, of course, is not a ghost story, and doubtless the expectation of it being one led this reviewer astray. 

My views on The Haunted Woman appeared as an Afterword to the 2004 Tartarus Press edition. 

 

 

 

A Centenary of The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay

After David Lindsay's first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, was published in 1920, his next novel was serialized in The Daily News newspaper of London from the 30th of August 1921, through the 23rd of September.  Thus today marks the centenary of the completed serialized publication of The Haunted Woman. 

An extensive analysis of "The Haunted Woman in The Daily News" appears at The Violet Apple.org.  (Direct link here.)  

A brief announcement of the serial, together with a photograph of Lindsay and his baby daughter, appeared in the newspaper on 29th August.