Gift inscription on front free endpaper; boards very good; jacket with small section of loss near foot of spine of upper panel, closed tear to top edge of lower panel, minor chipping to spine ends.
Plates, illustrations, maps & plans.
£75
A narrative…through the trance mediumship of Richard E. Pugh, Bulawayo
South Africa, Central News Agency, [1941].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Presented as “a true narrative” of the history of Great Zimbabwe communicated through the trance mediumship of Richard E. Pugh of Bulawayo, this is a curiosity of interwar Rhodesian spiritualism, an example of the “psychic archaeology” fringe genre that attached itself to the Zimbabwe ruins controversy of the period.
In stock
Gift inscription on front free endpaper; boards very good; jacket with small section of loss near foot of spine of upper panel, closed tear to top edge of lower panel, minor chipping to spine ends.
Plates, illustrations, maps & plans.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Eveleigh Nash, 1916.
First edition. 8vo. Advertisements. Original cloth.
Two poems and eight short stories, mostly of darkly supernatural nautical themes inspired by the author's own time at sea. "Long neglected, unappreciated, one of most important formative influences in modern tale of supernatural horror." (Bleiler). Very rare.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Stanley Paul, 1909.
First edition. 8vo. Original (variant) blue cloth.
A key work in Hope Hodgson's canon, here in a seemingly unknown variant binding (the normal is red cloth, with green also being recorded). The tale recounts a ship crew's strange & terrifying experience as their reality comes into contact with an alternative, darker mirror world. Bleiler was a huge fan of Hope Hodgson, calling his novels "visionary accounts that have no real parallels in English literature". Of this particular title he noted:
"One of the great sea novels. highly original in detail and well done. Although it is overshadowed as visionary horror by the more spectacular The House on the Borderland and The Night Land, as a work of art, it is finer." (The Guide to Supernatural Fiction).
A revised version of the ending was anthologised, under the title "The Silent Ship".
Weird & Supernatural
London, Robert Hale, 1956.
First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in green with silver stamped logo to spine. Dust-jacket correctly priced 10s 6d.
One of the last novels by Cicely Sibyl Alexandra Dick-Erikson under the pseudonym Alexandra Dick (she also wrote as Frances Hay), a story of murder & satanism. Uncommon.
Weird & Supernatural
and other Naval Stories. As originally Told to the Marines by one of themselves.
Portsmouth, Charpentier, 1896.
True first edition. 8vo. Original purple cloth stamped in gilt.
A rare collection of nautical tales, many of a weird and supernatural bent. The collection is referenced in Bleiler's Guide to Supernatural Fiction, the main entry given to the 1899 Simpkin, Marshall edition, but noting 'There is an earlier edition of this book (Charpentier; Portsmouth, England 1896), which has not been seen.'
William Price Drury (1861-1949) was himself in the Royal Marines, as was the previous owner of this copy, General Sir Lewis Stratford Tollemache Halliday.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd, 1928.
Early jacketed edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt. Dust-jacket.
A rare jacketed issue of this important work by Father Benson, lauded in his own day as one of the leading figures in English literature, having written the notable novel Lord of the World (1907). This collection of supernatural horror stories, originally published in various periodicals and later collected in book form, examines "that horrible sense of silence round about us, in which dreadful forces are alert and watching us."