May Lamberton Becker published a reply to W.S.'s query (from the 22 December 1928 issue of The Saturday Review) in her column "The Reader's Guide" for 26 January 1929. This time the writer gave his full name, Richard Ely Morse, and fans of H.P. Lovecraft may recognize the name as that of one of Lovecraft's correspondents. Richard Ely Morse (1909-1986) was 19 at the time his letter appeared in The Saturday Review of Literature. He wouldn't meet Lovecraft until the summer of 1932, and their correspondence would continue until Lovecraft's death in March 1937. Lovecraft's forty-odd letters have been published, and, like Morse's letter below, exemplify Morse's devotion to fantasy and weird literature.
Richard Ely Morse, Princeton, N.J., sends the following additions to the list of fantasies:—
I was interested to see that W.S. is planning a study of fantasy, for with the exception of Robert Hillyer, the poet, and myself, I did not know there were any in this country who had made it their special study. Your list was one of the most complete I have ever seen in print, but I am venturing to append a list of my own, filling in the gaps.
"Fantasy, of course, has various subdivisions, such as the macabre, where we find Arthur Machen, Leonard Cline with his 'Dark Chamber,' Donald Douglas with 'The Grand Inquisitor,' and Ben Hecht with 'The Kingdom of Evil.' These are the only ones which may be strictly classed as fantasies; the bounds arc easy to overstep into the grotesque and horrible.
"Under sophisticated fantasy one might put the icy brilliance of Laforgue in 'Six Moral Tales,' Firbank's intricate wit, Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando,' and Van Vechten's 'Peter Whiffle.' Aubrey Beardsley's unfinished 'Venus and Tannhauser' might also be included here.
"Sentimental and satirical are two other varieties. The first named is usually the poorest, the type which 'A Little Clown Lost' best represents. Of the latter class, you have already mentioned the best exponent—Stella Benson.
"The list which follows here below cannot pretend to be complete, but with the list published in the Saturday Review on December 21, it makes up the most complete I know of. If W. S. knows of others, I wish he would let me know of them.
"No one who is interested at all in fantasy can afford to overlook James Branch Cabell; Walter de la Mare; James Stephens; Kenneth Grahame; Norman Douglas (especially his 'They Went'); Gerald Bullett with 'Mr. Godley Beside Himself' and 'The Baker's Cart'; and perhaps, Ernest Bramah with his 'Kai Lung' series. We have also 'Doodab' by Harold Loeb; 'These Mortals,' by Margaret Irwin; 'Flower Phantoms,' by Ronald Fraser; 'The Street of Queer Houses,' by Vernon Knowles; 'The Siamese Cat,' by Leon Underwood; 'A Mirror for Witches,' by Esther Forbes; 'The Early Adventures of Peachum Grew,' by Roy Helton; 'The Eternal Moment' and 'The Celestial Omnibus,' by E. M. Forster; 'The Adventures of Harlequin,' by Francis Bickney; 'The Marionette,' by Edwin Muir; 'The Worm Ouroboros,' by E. R. Eddison; 'Lud-in-the-Mist,' by Hope Mirrlees, 'Gandle Follows his Nose,' by Heywood Broun; 'Messer Marco Polo,' by Donn Byrne; 'The House of Lost Identity,' by Donald Corley; 'A House of Pomegranates,' by Oscar Wilde; 'Flecker's Magic,' by Norman Matson ; 'Nomad,' by Paul Jordan Smith; 'Twilight of the Gods,' by Richard Garnet!; 'Green Mansions' and 'A Little Boy Lost,' by W. H. Hudson; 'The Man Who was Thursday,' by G. K. Chesterton; and 'The Horned Shepherd1 by Edgar Jepson."
To this admirable collection let me [May Lamberton Becker] add Marie Cher's "The Door Unlocked," [correctly "The Door Unlatched"] which has given me deep delight and will please any lover of old Paris.
In the same mail with the letter above-quoted arrived a copy of "A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles," by Andre Maurois (Appleton), a fantasy just put into English by David Garnett and embellished with woodcuts by Edward Carrick in precisely the vein of the text. This demure record is of an adventurer (and a lady friend) cast away upon an island on which since 1861 the aristocracy and masters have been literary artists, Articoles—served and admired by the local Beos, short for Beotians. The allegory is transparent, but however light its texture, it is sound. It must certainly figure upon this list. The idea of a trans-Atlantic journey in a little boat occurred to M. Maurois from reading Alain Gerbault's story of his lone-hand cruise from east to west across the Atlantic, and it is appropriate that the jacket of this book should carry a notice of the English version of Gerbault's book, "The Fight of the Firecrest" (Appleton), as unusual an adventure as any voyager has brought through.
I've already read a large number of these titles, but will have to report back on The Early Adventures of Peacham Grew (1925) by Roy Helton.
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