Barker (Nugent) Written with my hand.
£375
Twenty-One Tales
London, Percival Marshall, [1951].
First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Rare collection of weird tales by Irish author Barker, perhaps best known for his ghost story ‘Whessoe’. Inscribed by him to the front free endpaper.
In stock
Some foxing; boards partly damp mottled, softened at head of spine; jacket rather worn, showing some effects of damp including creasing, rectangular mark to lower panel and inside front flap.
Jacket artwork by Eisner.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).