Thursday, December 31, 2015

A few last books of 2015

I'd just like to add a few recommendations for two nonfiction titles from 2015, and one translation.

It was very gratifying to see Harold Billings's third volume of his M.P. Shiel biography come out, An Ossuary for M.P. Shiel (Bucharest: L'Homme Recent, 2015). It slimmer than one could have hoped for, and limited to only 85 copies, but it covers the most important aspects of Shiels last years, and serves as an epilogue to Billings's two much more substantial volumes on Shiel's life. And it commemorates the 150th anniversary of Shiel's birth. 


The table of contents

Another outstanding non-fiction title from this past year is Richard J. Bleiler's study of Arthur Machen's 1914 fictional newspaper story, "The Angels of Mons", being taken up as a real event. The Strange Case of "The Angels of Mons": Arthur Machen's World War I Story, the Insistent Believers, and His Refutations (McFarland, 2015) is a kind of casebook which reprints a great deal of the original documents from around one hundred years ago, and puts them in their appropriate context. 


Finally, a small plug for the new French edition of Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), translated by Julie Petonnet-Vincent as Lud-en-Brume (Editions Callidor, 2015), with very nice pencilled illustrations by Hugo de Faucompret.  I wish all the illustrations had been in color, like the cover (see below).  The book includes translations of Neil Gaiman's Preface from 2000 and my own Introduction from 2005.







10 comments:

  1. Fabulous dust jacket art on the M.P. Shiel by Charles Schneider!

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    1. I appreciated his doing this, especially the new key. --HB (I forget who I am wherever I am)

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  2. Great to see the book still getting attention and a nice edition too!

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    1. I presume you mean the Mirrlees book, Mike. Readers should know of your letterpress edition of Mirrlees's poem Paris. Cut and paste this URL:
      https://www.peganapress.com/hope-mirrlees-paris.html

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    2. Yes, sorry, the Mirrlees book Doug. What a great story. One of my favorites. Thanks for the mention and hope you are well.

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  3. Pity that Harold's Shiel vol. 3 is not only expensive but already op. I don't understand why the limitation was so small for such a valuable work of scholarship. Anyone want to photocopy the pages for me? I'd make it worth your while.
    P.S. I think that should be L'homme, not le homme, recent. michael dirda

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  4. Lud in the Mist is a book I only discovered after reading Susanna Clarke, as it surely influenced her style. I do wish she'd write another book, by the by!

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    1. Yes, and this indebtedness is hinted at in Neil Gaiman's blurb calling Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years". Elsewhere Gaiman specified that his seventy years was chosen specifically to reference the Mirrlees novel.

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