“Eminent in Everything Except Fame”: Cyril Hodges and Kenneth Morris

Cyril Hodges (1915-1974) was a Welsh poet, remembered as a successful businessman who was a generous patron of the arts, including in particular some Welsh poetry magazines. He did publish some small books of poetry, and deserves to be remembered for some of his poems too.

I first encountered him through my work on Kenneth Morris. Hodges first book was China Speaks (1941), published under the pseudonym of Cyril Hughes. It contains twenty-one poems translated from the Chinese of the T'ang period, all of which were based on the prose recensions made by Kenneth Morris, though Hodges did compare them with the work of other translators.  Here is the final poem in the booklet:

                Resignation

                by Wang Wei

Dawn after dawn . . . what is their sum?
That final dawn to which we come!
Spring after Spring . . .  what should we praise?
The Spring preceding winter-days?
Night with its wings encloses all;
These roses wither, fade and fall:
If it must be that we decline,
Let it be sweetly . . . into wine;
And if Death’s seed in all must lie,
Let memory be the first to die!

His next collection, Seeing Voice: Welsh Heart (1965) appeared under his real name, in an elegant volume printed in Paris, with original lithographs by the American artist Paul Jenkins (1923-2012). Most of the seventeen original poems center on figures from Welsh mythological tales, and Hodges give details on the poems in the several pages of notes at the end of the volume.

His third collection was a card-covered booklet of eighteen poems, Remittances (1971), followed later that same year by Coming of Age, a collection of forty-one poems (my copy is a trade paperback, but there was also reportedly a casebound hardcover), with illustrations by Sue Shields. Two poems (“The Mead Song of Taliesin” and “Blodeuwedd”) are reprinted from Seeing Voice: Welsh Heart, but none come from Remittances. An introductory statement by the author notes that the book is “a gathering into one centre all the influences that have swayed me since I became fully conscious of being Anglo-Welsh.”

Hodges occasionally has some really memorable lines. Particularly I have liked one poem titled “Pen Rhys,” which appeared in The Anglo-Welsh Review in 1968, and was reprinted in Coming of Age:

                      Pen Rhys

Because a madness grew (and I am Welsh
And therefore mad with justice), I’ll be song
Spat out of rock and poverty,
Reprieved from balancing of right and wrong.

I’ll be amoral as the rain-washed stone
On bleak Pen Rhys, and whistle with the wind,
Grass-bent and empty of desire:
To have desired at all is to have sinned.

I’ll reach an age where nothing matters more
Than the cold rage of being; and I know
The condemnation and the praise
Are truly nothing should that wind blow.

In another poem from Coming of Age, “Instruction from the Magi,” Hodges recalls two people who taught him much. For one, he gives only the initials “J.E.” but the other he names as Cennydd (i.e., Cenydd, or Kenneth Morris):

 . . . Cennydd, you incited me
With prophecies and predictions
Of freedom. Now you are safely dead and freed
From the blame the half-dead bear alone.
And now begins that near-known meaning
Of wind whispering between empty stones.

. . .
I think that Cennydd knew my destiny, had read it
In the stone Book of Carnac: J.E. had plumbed
My bloodiness with a cunning knowledge.

Above all, they were never rational; but small
And frail and unconquerable men: they have taken my heart
To their graves that their blood may flow in the veins
And arteries of Wales. There will be battle,
Payment for the essential and the undesired mead.

I created a garden from the dry, cracked limestone
Of Morgannwg, and asked no more than the lies
Of comfortable Iolo, and Iestyn’s victory,
And the falsity of books upon a winter night.

Because of two dead men I must re-live Cattraeth,
Pay for the mead I did not drink, and see the glaze
Of staring English eyes in the blazing sun.

I wish I could know some peace again upon my borders,
Behind a flowering hedge taller than Englishmen.

I think that Cennydd knew my desity, had heard it
From the talking winds of Carnac: J.E. had heard
Some whisper of that wind and recognised the voice.

In an autobiographical note in Contemporary Poets (1970), edited by Rosalie Murphy, Hodges wrote a bit more about his association with Morris:

“Educated only to high school standard, but thereafter was fortunate to meet Dr. Cenydd Morus and to study Welsh literature with him. His tuition civilised, formulated and gave some unity of purpose to what would otherwise have remained an unresolved flux of callow prejudices. He was eminent in everything except fame, content to impart his knowledge freely to one who shared his own delight in that knowledge."

Morris died in 1937, when Hodges was twenty-two. Hodges afterwards married and had three sons. In later years he lived in Penarth, and was friends with Kenneth Morris’s executor, Alex E. Urquhart, who in his nineties aided me in my work on Morris, and shared with me Hodges's booklets and poems after I visited him in Penarth in 1992. At that time he showed me Morris’s desk, which he still had and used, as it had come to him after Morris’s death fifty-five years earlier.

Note:  I also keep an occasional blog on Kenneth Morris here.

The Captain: A History, Index and Bibliography

Some time ago, Chris Harte sent me a photograph of "Nicholas Olde" (the pseudonymous author of The Incredible Adventures of Roland Hern, published in 1928) to go along with my entry on Olde, here, at my Lesser-Known Writers blog. It was a discovery from his work on a book on The Captain, a UK magazine for boys which ran from 1899 through 1924. 

His book has since been published. It is titled The Captain: A History, Index and Bibliography (Sports History Publishing, 2021), ISBN 9781898010135 £10.95. It is a very thorough look at the 300 issues of The Captain that were published.  There is a plethora of photographs of the various contributors, as well as covers, and informative essays on the magazine itself, but the heart of the book is the the contents listing of each issue, and the indexes of writers (one of "Major Writers"--which has biographies of the writers-- the other of "Other Writers" which just lists the volumes of The Captain in which each writer appears), and illustrators (similarly, the "Major Illustrators" section has biographies, while the "Other Illustrators" lists just names and appearances).  

There were a huge number of writers and illustrators that are represented in The Captain, but let me list here a selection of names that might interest Wormwoodiana readers:  Francis Henry Atkins (and other nom de plumes), Charles Beadle, H. Bedford-Jones, A.E. Bestall, John Buchan, A.M. Burrage, Ernest Favenc, Warwick Goble, Lucy Moberly, Frank C. Pape, Max Rittenberg, Herbert Vivian, F.A.M. Webster, and P.G. Wodehouse.  I was interested to see Ridgwell Cullum identified as a pseudonym (new to me) of Sidney Groves Burkhard, and while Patrick Vaux is correctly identified as a pseudonym of MacLaren Mein, one of his other pseudonyms, Nigel Tourneur, is described as a probably pen-name, but not identified with Mein.  

Anyway, there is a lot of information in this book to enjoy and digest in its nearly four hundred pages, much more than one might expect considering its remit of covering one magazine. Thereby it helps fill in details on many of the writers and illustrators who filled its pages. 

James Doig and the Australian Weird

Over the last decade and a half, James Doig has quietly shown himself to be the premiere authority on classical Australian weird fiction and fantasy. I've enjoyed his anthologies, and the single-author collection by Ernest Ferenc (whose work also appears in multiple anthologies), not to mention Doig's own excellent fiction (ten stories) in the Sarob Press volume Friends of the Dead (2015).

Last summer I learned of a new (to me) anthology from 2019, and after acquiring it I made for my own reference a table of contents to the five anthologies (plus the Ferenc collection), so I could more easily recall which stories appeared in which book. I thought I'd share with Wormwoodiana my contents listing and title index. 

At least one book (Australian Nightmares, 2008) is currently unavailable, and the listing for the others oddly do not come up at Amazon.com via a search by Doig's name (though they do at Amazon.co.uk). Yet the Amazon.com links do come up if you search via bookfinder.com. I have no idea why. 

Books:

Australian Gothic: An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction, ed. James Doig
    Mandurah, W.A.:  Equilibrium Books, 2007
    [n.p.]: Borgo Press, 2013
    [Contains: “Introduction”;  “The Spirit of the Tower” by Mary Fortune;  “Little Luiz” by B.L. Farjeon; “The House by the River” by G.A. Walstab; “The Ghost from the Sea” by J.E.O. Muddock; “Spirit-Led”, “A Haunt of the Jinkarras” and “The Boundary Rider’s Story” by Ernest Favenc; “Cannabis Indica” by Marcus Clarke; “Norah and the Fairies” by Hume Nisbet; “The Ghost-Monk” by Rosa Praed; “Lupton’s Guest: A Memory of the Eastern Pacific” by Louis Becke; “A Colonial Banshee” by Fergus Hume; “A Strange Experience” by A.F. Bassett Hull; “A Bushman’s Story” by Frances Faucett; “The Death Child” by Guy Boothby; “The Jewelled Hand” and “The Vengeance of the Dead” by Lionel Sparrow; “The Cave” and “The Forest of Lost Men” by Beatrice Grimshaw;  “The Cave of the Invisible” by James Francis Dwyer; “Where the Butterflies Come From” by William Hay; “The Vampire” by W.W. Lamble; “Hallowe’en” by Dulcie Deamer.]   

Australian Nightmares: More Australian Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. James Doig
    Mandurah, W.A.:  Equilibrium Books, 2008
    [Contains: “Introduction”;  “Acknowledgements”; “The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale” by Mary Fortune; “The Silent Sepulchre” by Charles Junor; “What the Rats Brought” and “On the Island of Shadows” by Ernest Favenc; “The Odic Touch” by Hume Nesbit; “Told in the ‘Corona’s’ Cabin. On Three Evenings” by J.A. Barry; “The House of Ill Omen” by Rosa Praed; “A Thing of Wax” by Morley Roberts; “The Prophetic Horror of the Great Experiment” and “The Precipitous Details of the High Mountain and the Three Skeletons” by James Edmund; “The Strange Case of Alan Heriot” by Lionel Sparrow; “The Blanket Fiend” by Beatrice Grimshaw; “The Phantom Ship of Dirk Van Tromp” by James Francis Dwyer; “The Pledge” by Helen Simpson; “The Watch” and “The House That Took Revenge” by Vernon Knowles; “The Story of the Waxworks” by Rosaleen Norton; “The Undying One” by Roger Dard.] 

Australian Ghost Stories, ed. James Doig
    Ware, Hertfordshire:  Wordsworth Editions, 2010
    [Contains:  “Introduction”; “The White Maniac:  A Doctor’s Tale” by Mary Fortune;  “Spirit-Led” by Ernest Favenc; “A Haunt of the Jinkarras” by Ernest Favenc;  “The Mystery of Major Molineaux” by Marcus Clarke;  “The Bunyip” by Rosa Campbell Praed; “Lupton’s Guest: A Memory of the Eastern Pacific” by Louis Becke;  “The Haunted Pool: A Tale of the Blue Mountains” by Edward Wheatley;  “A Colonial Banshee” by Fergus Hume;  “The Devil of the Marsh” by H.B. Marriott Watson;  “The Accursed Thing” by Edward Dyson;  “The Third Murder: A New South Wales Tale” by Henry Lawson;  “The Death Child” by Guy Boothby;  “A Strange Goldfield” by Guy Boothby;  “Sea Voices” by Roderic Quinn;  “The Cave” by Beatrice Grimshaw;  “The Cave of the Invisible” by James Francis Dwyer;  “Hallowe’en” by Dulcie Deamer.]

Australian Hauntings: Colonial Supernatural Fiction, ed. James Doig
    Mandurah, W.A.:  Equilibrium Books, 2011
    [n.p.]: Borgo Press, 2013
    [Contains:  “Acknowledgements”; “Introduction”; “Jerry Boake’s Confession” by Ernest Favenc; “The Track of the Dead” by Ernest Favenc; “Blood for Blood” by Ernest Favenc; “In the Night” by Ernest Favenc; “A Strange Occurrence on Huckey’s Creek” by Ernest Favenc;  “The Wraith of Tom Imrie”by William Sylvester Walker; “Hulk No. 49” by J.A. Barry; “Miss Crosson’s Familiar” by Rosa Praed; “The Ghost of Brigalow Bend” by “Wanderer”; “The Spectre of the Black Swamp: An Overlander’s Story” by Edwin M. Merrall; “Chronicles of Easyville” by Patrick Shanahan; “Point Despair” by H.B. Marriott Watson; “A New Species” by Robert Coutts Armour; “De Profundus” by Robert Coutts Armour; “The Story of the Stain” by Sophie Osmond; “The Sorcerer of Arjuzanx” by Max Rittenberg; “The Queer Case of Christine Madrigal” by A. E. Martin, “The Hollmsdale Horror” by A. E. Martin; “The Pythoness” by Helen Simpson; “The Evil That Men Do” by Patience Tillyard.] 

 

Ghost and Mystery Stories, by Ernest Favenc, ed. by James Doig
    [n.p.]: Borgo Press, 2013
    [Contains: “Introduction”;  “My Story”; “The Lady Ermetta; or, The Sleeping Secret”; “The Medium”; “The Dead Hand”; “Jerry Boake's Confession”; “A Haunt of the Jinkarras”; “The Last of Six”; “The Spell of the Mas-hantoo”; “Spirit-led”; “The Ghost's Victory”; “Malchook's Doom”; “The Red Lagoon”; “The Track of the Dead”; “Blood for Blood”; “In the Night”; “The Ghostly Bullock-bell”; “My Only Murder”; “An Unquiet Spirit”; “The Boundary Rider's Story”; “A Strange Occurrence on Huckey's Creek”; “The Unholy Experiment of Martin Shenwick, and What Came of It”; “Doomed”; “The Mount of Misfortune”; “The Blood-debt”; “On the Island of Shadows”; “The Haunted Steamer”; “The Girl Body-stealer”; “M'Whirter's Wraith”; “The Land of the Unseen”; “What the Rats Brought”; “The Kaditcha: A Tale of the Northern Territory”; “Bibliography”.]

Beyond the Orbit: Australian Science Fiction to 1935, ed. by James Doig
    [n.p.]: Wildside Press, 2019
    [Contains:  “Introduction”; “What the Rats Brought” by Ernest Favenc; “The Land of the Unseen” by Ernest Favenc; “The Instrument” by H.B. Marriott Watson; “Lost Wings” by Beatrice Grimshaw; “The Social Code” by Erle Cox; “Beyond the Orbit” by Robert Coutts Armour; “Take It as Red” by Robert Coutts Armour; “After 1 Million Years” by J.M. Walsh; “The Gland Men of the Island” by Max Afford; “The Inner Domain” by Phil Collas; “The Bluff of the Hawk” by Desmond Hall and Harry Bates; “The Reign of the Reptiles” by Alan Connell; “Dream's End” by Alan Connell.]

    

Contents, alphabetically by author:

Max Afford
“The Gland Men of the Island”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)

Robert Coutts Armour
“Beyond the Orbit”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)
“De Profundus”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
“A New Species”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
“Take It as Red”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019) 

J.A. Barry
“Hulk No. 49”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
“Told in the ‘Corona’s’ Cabin. On Three Evenings”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Louis Becke
“Lupton’s Guest: A Memory of the Eastern Pacific”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

Guy Boothby
“The Death Child”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
“A Strange Goldfield”
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

Marcus Clarke
“Cannabis Indica”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Phil Collas
“The Inner Domain”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)

Alan Connell
“Dream's End”  
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)
“The Reign of the Reptiles”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)

Erle Cox
“The Social Code”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)

Roger Dard
“The Undying One”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Dulcie Deamer    
“Hallowe’en”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

James Francis Dwyer
“The Cave of the Invisible”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
“The Phantom Ship of Dirk Van Tromp”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Edward Dyson
“The Accursed Thing”
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

James Edmund
“The Prophetic Horror of the Great Experiment”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“The Precipitous Details of the High Mountain and the Three Skeletons”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

B.L. Farjeon
“Little Luiz”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Frances Faucett
“A Bushman’s Story”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Ernest Favenc
“Blood for Blood”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Blood-debt”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Boundary Rider’s Story”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Dead Hand”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Ghost's Victory”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Ghostly Bullock-bell”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Girl Body-stealer”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“Doomed”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“A Haunt of the Jinkarras”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Haunted Steamer”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“In the Night”
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“Jerry Boake’s Confession”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Kaditcha: A Tale of the Northern Territory”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Lady Ermetta; or, The Sleeping Secret”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Land of the Unseen” Beyond the Orbit (2019)  
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Last of Six”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“M'Whirter's Wraith”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“Malchook's Doom”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Medium”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Mount of Misfortune”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“My Only Murder”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“My Story”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“On the Island of Shadows”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Red Lagoon”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Spell of the Mas-hantoo”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“Spirit-Led”
    Australian Gothic  (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories  (2010)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
 “A Strange Occurrence on Huckey’s Creek”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Track of the Dead”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“The Unholy Experiment of Martin Shenwick, and What Came of It”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“An Unquiet Spirit”
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)
“What the Rats Brought”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)
    Favenc, Ghost and Mystery Stories (2013)

Mary Fortune
“The Spirit of the Tower”
    Australian Gothic  (2007)
“The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
    Australian Ghost Stories  (2010)

Beatrice Grimshaw  
“The Blanket Fiend”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“The Cave”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
“The Forest of Lost Men”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
“Lost Wings”  
    Beyond the Orbit (2019) 

Desmond Hall and Harry Bates
“The Bluff of the Hawk”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019)

William Hay
“Where the Butterflies Come From”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

A.F. Bassett Hull  
“A Strange Experience”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Fergus Hume
“A Colonial Banshee”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

Charles Junor
“The Silent Sepulchre”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Vernon Knowles
“The Watch”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“The House That Took Revenge”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

W.W. Lamble
“The Vampire”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Henry Lawson
“The Third Murder: A New South Wales Tale”
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

A.E. Martin
“The Queer Case of Christine Madrigal”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)
“The Hollmsdale Horror”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Edwin M. Merrall
“The Spectre of the Black Swamp: An Overlander’s Story”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

J.E.O. Muddock
“The Ghost from the Sea”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

Hume Nisbet
“Norah and the Fairies”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
“The Odic Touch”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Rosaleen Norton
“The Story of the Waxworks”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Sophie Osmond
“The Story of the Stain”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Rosa Campbell Praed
“The Bunyip”
     Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
“The Ghost-Monk”
    Australian Gothic (2007)
“The House of Ill Omen”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“Miss Crosson’s Familiar”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Roderic Quinn
“Sea Voices”
    Australian Ghost Stories  (2010)

Max Rittenberg
“The Sorcerer of Arjuzanx”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Morley Roberts
“A Thing of Wax”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)

Patrick Shanahan
“Chronicles of Easyville”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Helen Simpson
“The Pledge”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“The Pythoness”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Lionel Sparrow
“The Jewelled Hand”
    Australian Gothic  (2007)
“The Strange Case of Alan Heriot”
    Australian Nightmares (2008)
“The Vengeance of the Dead”
    Australian Gothic  (2007)

Patience Tillyard
“The Evil That Men Do”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

William Sylvester Walker
“The Wrait of Tom Imrie”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

J.M. Walsh
“After 1 Million Years”
    Beyond the Orbit (2019) 

G.A. Walstab
“The House by the River”
    Australian Gothic (2007)

“Wanderer”
“The Ghost of Brigalow Bend”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

H.B. Marriott Watson
“The Devil of the Marsh”  
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)
“The Instrument”  
    Beyond the Orbit (2019) 
“Point Despair”  
    Australian Hauntings (2011)

Edward Wheatley
“The Haunted Pool: A Tale of the Blue Mountains”
    Australian Ghost Stories (2010)

The Ghost of Greville Lodge

I recently watched The Ghost of Greville Lodge, a film made in 2000. It's a moderately well-done ghost story centering on a young teen who goes to stay with his (previously unknown) great uncle at a country mansion.  Past events (of sixty years earlier) play out on the boy, centering on the ghost of another young boy. The film was interesting enough, so that I wondered if the source-book, a young-adult book by Nicholas Wilde called Down Came the Blackbird (1991), might be better. In short, it's not, but it makes for an interesting comparison.

The teen in the book is much more of a delinquent, and the "ghost" is not a ghost, but a series of shared dreams of the past. As reframed for the film, the plot works rather better with the ghost. Here, unusually, the translation from book to film seems to be for the better.

There is little available on the author Nicholas Wilde (on the web, his accomplishments are conflated with at least one other Nicholas Wilde, an American who worked as a location manager in the film industry in the 2000s). On the dust-wrapper of the US edition of Down Came a Blackbird he is described as "a teacher in Cambridgeshire, England." On the dust-wrapper of his first book it notes that he was educated at Cheltenham and Cambridge, that he is an avid collector of children's books and Victorian toys, and that he is a German scholar and obsessive Wagnerite.

Some bibliographical sleuthing reveals that he published some other children's books, three dealing with highly-charged friendships between two boys.  These include Into the Dark (1987), Death Knell (1990) and Eye of the Storm (1995; retitled in the US The Eye of the Storm). His first book was the comical Sir Bertie & the Wyvern: A Tale of Heraldry (1982), followed by Huffle (1984), the latter illustrated by the author.

Readers of Wormwoodiana will possibly find more interesting the fine press 1991 reprint, illustrated by Nicholas Wilde, of Edmund John's The Flute of Sardonyx (1913), a slim collection of Uranian verse. Here are a few illustrations. More can be seen at the Old Stile Press website here. 

 

Nicholas Wilde's last book was published in 1995, and after that I find no certain trace of him.