The British Library, in their Tales of the Weird series, has just published a reprint of E.H. Visiak's rare 1929 novel, Medusa. It is introduced by Aaron Worth, and he begins, appropriately, with the bizarre position that Medusa has come to occupy to moderns readers. Owing to hyperbolic nonsense from Karl Edward Wagner (in his infamous 1983 Twilight Zone magazine lists), most readers of Medusa in the last forty-plus years have come to the book with completely mistaken expectations. Forget them. Come to Medusa with a clean slate, and you might find some attractions that have no relation to the reputation that Wagner and others have put upon it. Forget as well the fact that E.H. Visiak was one of the few literary friends of David Lindsay, author of A Voyage to Arcturus (1920). Visiak was an idiosyncratic thinker, and though he wrote on Lindsay, he clearly didn't understand either Lindsay or his book very well.
Visiak gave Medusa a subtitle: "A Novel of Mystery, Ecstasy and Strange Horror." And it is that indeed. It begins as a kind of Stevensonian adventure, and shifts a few times to become something other, and something larger. Embedded in the narrative are Visiak's views on childhood as a ideal state of innocence, later spoiled by human passion---which was first formulated in one of Visiak's earliest published poems:
The Child State Thou Hast Lost
As one reads Medusa, it is worth bearing in mind how this relates to the main characters.
Below is the cover of the new edition, and under that, the rear cover with a blurb and a tentacled portrait of Visiak himself (c. 1910). (The art is credited to Mag Ruhig.)
Mag Ruhig has done a number of other covers for the Tales of the Weird series. See:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instagram.com/magruhig/
Allo Doug,
ReplyDeleteHas MEDUSA entered into the public domain? In addition to the above, it seems that Monte House and Charybdis Press have also put out editions. I think they all may be POD. And the Charybdis Press edition is paired with THE HAUNTED ISLAND.
TLO is reporting that The British Library edition, "there's a note about dated attitudes and six main edits and a few more edits for style and consistency."
The Monte House edition includes a note from the editor saying, "We enjoyed putting together this piece for you. We hope you are able to enjoy it. In order to keep the integrity of the novel, we didn't change the text very often, and only made the simplest of edits so that it would help with flow."
Both of the previous leave me uneasy; as such, I have e-mailed Charybdis Press and inquired about any editing that may have occurred with their edition.
When you speak about the public domain, you have to specify the location/country. Visiak, who died in 1972, is still in copyright in the UK. However, in the US< Medusa went into the public domain at the beginning of this year.
DeleteThe British Library edition (not POD) notes that it is "printed with the permission of the author's estate." The "Note from the Publisher" does indeed mention the editing; it's a kind of boilerplate note that appear in other BL texts, with variant wording. I hadn't previously noted that is is different (and more specific) in Medusa.
I hadn't noticed the Monte House or Charybdis Press editions (both apparently published April 9th, and both POD)--I wonder if they merely scraped the BL e-book for the text and reformatted it. Thus they would repeat the BL changes, whatever they are.
Allo Doug,
DeleteExcellent point about countries; as a former librarian, I should have remembered and considered that.
Jason Blasso, the publisher behind Carybdis Press, responded saying "Having paired MEDUSA with THE HAUNTED ISLAND, the same layout was used for both.
"I also like to keep page count low to provide the best possible price for the books.
"Nothing was edited textually, save for some minor print corrections."
Crucially, the publisher does not state where his text came from. The fact that a rare book was made available in early April 2025 in a digital edition, and was quickly followed by not one but two competing digital editions, makes me leery.
DeleteAmazon shows the BL Kindle edition to have been published April 13th; whereas the other two show April 9th (though the credits of the Monte House edition show April 8th). Given presumably different artwork, layout, introductions and the like, and the Charybdis Press edition combining it with THE HAUNTED ISLAND, I wonder if April 9th was as soon as it could post to Amazon after it went out of copyright in the US?
DeleteLooking into Monte House, at least one of the editors/publishers has posts about the Redeemer, salvation, and such. So I do wonder about that ". . . we didn't change the text very often."
The timing is odd, though, you're right in that. Of what has been written, taken at face value, the Charybdis edition sounds the most promising until you consider that it's two novels (even though short) in 220 pages. Corrective eye surgery destroyed my near vision. I suspect microscopic print that would give me fits. Maybe I'll just opt for the BL version and, if I love it, hold out hope that I one day find an early hardcover or Centipede edition that is within my means.
You can't take those Amazon pub dates as completely accurate. (I know from the experience of my own books). As regards the BL Medusa, Amazon UK says the pub date was April 17th, yet my copy arrived here (in the US) on the 15th, so copies were clearly available more than a week earlier. That is likely true for the ebook too.
DeleteMedusa went into the Public Domain in the U.S. as of January 1st, so had no effect on the flurry of early April.
Well, I just bought the 1946 reprint. An expensive solution to a simple problem.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy!
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