Lionel Sparrow Collection - The Jewelled Hand and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre

 I've written before about obscure Australian author, Lionel Sparrow (1867-1936) on Wormwoodiana and in Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic.

Now the good folk at Valancourt Books are about to publish a huge collection of his work titled The Jewelled Hand and Other Tales of Myster and the Macabre in a classic Valancourt jacket.

The book collects 24 stories published in the long-lived Australian publication The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science and the Arts (1865-1962). The Australian Journal is yet to be digitised by the National Library of Australia and copies of it are hard to come by.

A journalist and newspaper proprietor, Sparrow lived and worked almost in his entire life in the tiny Victorian town of Linton (the population in 2016 was 580). He contributed some extraordinarily imaginative and often brutal tales to one of Australia's premier literary magazines and here is a rare chance to sample his work.  The book can be pre-ordered here.