'Wraiths' and 'The Tattered Shadows'

Zagava have announced pre-orders for Wraiths, a paperback reprint of my two Eighteen Nineties essays, ‘Wraiths’ and ‘What Became of Dr Ludovicus’ in a limited edition of 199 copies. The first of these discusses five Nineties poets so elusive that very little if any of their verse has survived: just a few lines in one case, rumours in another, or no more than a memory of an apocalyptic incantation.

The second concerns a lost ‘shocker’ co-written by Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore, where the plot can be reconstructed to a certain extent from the letters between them as they discussed the collaboration. The essay reveals that the two were at work on a supernatural thriller in the style of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Great God Pan.

Zagava have also announced that the letterpress edition of a new story, ‘Vestige’, has been delayed but it will now be accompanied by a facsimile of a Voynich book catalogue. Voynich specialised in books thought lost or even not to exist, and ‘Vestige’ explores similar terrain. The story concerns the ghostly residue of Arthur Malyon, an author invented by Aubrey Beardsley in a letter to Leonard Smithers, the publisher of The Savoy. But was that reference really the last of this shadowy figure? Is it possible that a fabled slim volume of his work exists? 

Meanwhile, Raphus Press in Brazil have announced pre-orders for a new hard cover edition of the short story The Tattered Shadows, co-written by John Howard and me. The story, set in Nineteen Thirties Chile and Lisbon, concerns the quest for an unknown language used by mysterious strangers, with 'a haunting filmic atmosphere of a Casablanca or a Third Man, with wartime dangers and intrigues' (Des Lewis).

It was originally issued in a small print run in 2020, and now appears with Restos de sombras, a new translation into Portuguese, and an afterword by Alcebiades Diniz Miguel. It will be in a limited edition of 50 numbered copies. 

(Mark Valentine)