A little minor spotting to extremities; cloth very good; jacket worn at spine ends and fore-corners with loss.
Horsnell (Horace) Castle Cottage
£395
London, Hamish Hamilton, 1940.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
A prolific playwright, drama critic and author active in English literary circles from around 1910. This ghost story is one of the author’s few dalliances with the supernatural.
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Weird & Supernatural
London, Herbert Jenkins, [c.1934].
First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 2/6.
A wonderful, bright jacket on this scarce early printing by a prolific author, who wrote over 40 novels, often with a flair for unusual phrasing that would be lucky to escape the editor's blue pencil these days.
Weird & Supernatural
a narration of the perilous sojourn therein of George Cowper, mariner, etc.
London, Henry J. Drane, [1897].
First edition. 8vo. Original pictorial light grey-green cloth.
Castaways on uncharted island fall under seemingly supernatural power of life and death held by the Mighty Justin, Lord of the Land of the Living Dead. In fact, the island is permeated by deadly volcanic gas for which Justin alone possesses an antidote that is administered only to loyal subjects. Bleiler p. 78.a
A good copy of a scarce book rarely found in decent condition.
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, 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
and Other Weird Tales
London, Cassell, 1947.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped and with publisher's '4/6 Cheap Edition' sticker to upper panel.
A collection of mysterious and weird tales, by an author who numbered among his close friends Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, and whose work was compared favourably to that of H.G. Wells and Conan Doyle: "He plays as daringly with the test tubes of science as did the early H.G. Wells...Mr. Heard is a new master in this field..." (New York Times).



















