Geoffrey Dennis was the author of five novels under his own name and at least one other, a thriller, as one of a shared pseudonym. He also wrote a most unusual prose work, The End of the World (1930), which has attracted connoisseurs of the stylish and recondite.
This month marks the centenary of the first publication of his Harvest in Poland (1925), a rather overlooked but powerful novel of the supernatural. A new and revised edition was issued in 1931.
The novel follows the spiritual journey of a young man, Emmanuel Lee, who has psychic sensitivity. It falls in two parts. In the first we are introduced to his background and time in provincial England, including a fairly sympathetic, open-minded portrayal of spiritualistic circles. Then he makes the acquaintance of a Polish aristocrat and accompanies him to his family estates in Poland, where hints of shadowy forces begin to emerge. These are subtly conveyed in careful details, building an atmosphere of the sinister and uncanny involving opposing dualistic forces. There is some affinity to Middle European fantastic literature of this period, for example by Gustav Meyrink and Leo Perutz.
E F Bleiler describes Harvest in Poland as: ‘A long psychological novel portraying in supernatural terms both the degeneration of European society just before World War I and the spiritual odyssey of a sensitive young man . . . Somewhat reminiscent of the novels of E. F. Benson in its concept of spiritual evil, but much more powerful and grotesque’ (The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, 1983). Bleiler did, however, think the novel over-long.
The Neglected Books Page website quotes a passage from a review by H L Mencken in The American Mercury, which said that Dennis was: ‘[A] story-teller of unusual talent, with a great deal of originality.’ The novel was an ‘… impossible story told in terms of the most meticulous realism…His prose has a Carlylean thunder in it; he knows how to roll up gorgeous sentences.’
A distinctly different and frankly cruder occult novel by Dennis is The Devil and X Y Z, a collaboration with Hilary Saint George Saunders under the joint pen-name of Barum Browne. This is a crime thriller but with rather garish black magic elements. The Spectator (26 June 1931) reviewed it as follows: ‘In The Devil and X. Y. Z., Mr. Barum Browne gets most of the way towards writing a good thriller by creating a bad villain. Le Cure is the suave agent, not of those rather nebulous Powers who are always so pathetically anxious to import secret treaties and lethal inventions, but of the Powers of Darkness, and this treasure-hunting demonologist, with a past in the penal settlements of Guiana, makes a genuinely impressive figure when he holds the stage alone. Mr.Browne knows how to suggest evil. Unfortunately, the Forces of Light are represented by two insufferable undergraduates . . .’
To the extent that Dennis’ work is noticed at all, it is for The End of the World (1930), which was my own first encounter with Geoffrey Dennis’ books after it was recommended to me by the literary friar Fr Brocard Sewell, ‘equally for the manner as well as the matter’, he said. He admired the author’s prose style. It is not a novel but a fantasia evoking the various ways that apocalypse might come: fire, flood, ice, etc, with great imaginative force. It was awarded the 1930 Hawthornden Prize. It has probably suffered from not being in any obvious category: not fiction as such, yet not a factual study. The nearest equivalent, I suppose, might be the work of Olaf Stapledon, in subject though not in style.
The Neglected Books Page notes this was selected by Morris Bishop for a feature in The American Scholar, Autumn 1956, on ‘The Most Neglected Books of the Past 25 Years’: ‘It treats of the greatest of subjects: How? When? Which first? What after? It does so by means of a glorious space-time imagination, prickling humor and strange learning, sounded forth in mighty organ-tones, its diapason sounding full on man. And it has one of the finest last lines in literature.'
Geoffrey Pomeroy Dennis was born in Barnstaple, Devon on 20 January 1892. His novel Bloody Mary’s (Heinemann, 1934) describes a young boy’s abusive and sordid boarding school experiences. It is not clear whether this is at least partly autobiographical. He took a M.A. in Modern History at Oxford and then became an international civil servant, working as a League of Nations official in Geneva from 1920-1937.
His book Coronation Commentary (1937), which must surely have been purely a piece of commercial work, incautiously repeated rumours that led to a libel action by the Duke of Windsor (Edward VII), which was settled out of court when the publisher and author agreed to pay “substantial damages”: the Lord Chief Justice said they ought to be horsewhipped. Dennis’ career at Geneva ended around this time, perhaps not coincidentally. The row may also have affected Dennis’ literary career: no other book appeared from him for twenty years, apart from the history of World War Two that he edited. His memoir of childhood, Till Seven, was published in 1957. He died on 15 May 1963.
There is no doubt that Harvest in Poland at least should be better-known as visionary occult novel and that The End of the World will appeal to those who like oblique literary originals, but there is probably more to be found too in most of his books.
Checklist of books by Geoffrey Dennis
Mary Lee (Heinemann, 1922)
Harvest in Poland (Heinemann, 1925). Revised edition (Heinemann, 1931).
The End of the World (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1930).
Declaration of Love. Undiplomatic correspondence between Paris and Berlin (Heinemann, 1931)
The Devil and X.Y.Z. (Victor Gollancz ,1931). With Hilary Saint George Saunders, as ‘Barum Browne’.
Sale by Auction (Heinemann. 1932)
Bloody Mary’s (Heinemann, 1934)
Coronation Commentary (Heinemann, 1937)
Till Seven (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957)
As editor
In Memoriam Harold Parry, Second Lieutenant, K.R.R.C. Born at Bloxwich-December 13th, 1896; fell in Flanders-May 6th, 1917, etc. [Letters and poems by H. Parry. The editor's preface signed: G. P. D., i.e. Geoffrey P. Dennis. With a portrait.] (W. H. Smith & Son, [1918?])
The World at War. A history dealing with every phase of World War II on land, at sea, and in the air, including the events which led up to the outbreak of hostilities. Written by eminent authorities and edited by G. Dennis. [With plates and maps.] (Caxton Publishing Co, 1951)
Images:
The cover of the Knopf edition of 1925.
Signed inscription by the author in the New and Revised Edition of 1931.
(Mark Valentine)
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