Corelli (Marie, pseud. Mark Mackay) The Strange Visitation of Josiah McNason.
£295
A Christmas Ghost Story
London, Newnes, 1904.
First edition. 8vo. Contemporary cloth.
One of the best-selling authors of her era, Corelli’s supernatural and moral tales influenced popular fiction around the turn of the century. This novella is not generally ranked among her most “serious” works, rather one in the popular tradition of the Victorian era Christmas ghost stories, but it exemplifies her popular appeal and her use of moral supernaturalism. Uncommon.
In stock
Minor foxing, bookplate to front pastedown; cloth with minor rubbing to extremities but overall very good.
6 plates by H.R. Millar.
Provenance: Sir Ignatius John O’Brien (armorial bookplate).
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Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Beynon (John, pseud. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, aka John Wyndham) The Secret People
London, Newnes, [1935].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
Wyndham's first novel (or possibly second, the bibliographers not having entirely settled the matter, despite that surely being the point of bibliographers). Written in his twenties under the Beynon name, it is set in the impossibly distant future of 1964, by which point engineers have flooded a chunk of the Sahara to make an inland sea, and the well-off tour it by private rocket plane. As predictions go, wrong on every count, though one admires the aspiration.
British playboy Mark Sunnet and companion Margaret Lawn duly crash their pleasure rocket into the new Sahara Sea, survive that, and are promptly sucked down a whirlpool into a vast cavern world ruled by a mysterious race of pygmies. It is, in short, everything a 1935 scientific romance should be: brisk, preposterous, and quite unembarrassed about any of it.
Sixteen years later the same author produced The Day of the Triffids and became respectable. This is where he started, and early Beynon in collectable condition is far harder to find than the later fame would suggest.
London, Newnes, 1938-39.
3 issues (complete). Large 8vo. Original pictorial stapled wrappers.
Published by George Newnes Ltd, which paid respectable rates and obtained good-quality material, these three issues comprise a complete run of the magazine Fantasy, edited by T Stanhope Sprigg. The short-lived periodical included stories by significant authors such as John Wyndham, Eric Frank Russell and John Russell Fearn. John Beynon was one of the pseudonyms used by John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (1903–1969), the British science fiction writer best known for The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos.
Children's Books
London, Newnes, 1945.
First edition. 8vo. Original pale green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The third of the author's 'Lone Pine' series, set in Shropshire.
Detective Fiction
Beynon (John, pseud. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, aka John Wyndham) Foul Play Suspected
London, Newnes, [1935].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original green cloth. Facsimile dust-jacket.
Before John Wyndham was John Wyndham (and technically he was always John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, his parents having supplied enough names for six pseudonyms) he was John Beynon, author of this, his only published detective novel. It offers Detective-Inspector Jordon, a stolen formula, and a heroine who briskly rescues herself while everyone else stands about suspecting the titular foul play.
Two further Jordon mysteries went unpublished, which may explain the author's pivot to carnivorous plants. The Day of the Triffids (1951) made Wyndham famous, and retroactively made this book, which almost nobody bought, that being the problem, extremely scarce. Only a handful of copies have surfaced at market in twenty years; the original jacket is so rare that owning one frankly borders on the gratuitous.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Newnes, 1936.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
Sci-fi crime thriller aimed at a younger audience.