Before Arcturus: David Lindsay's Lost Novels

  

In July 2025 I acquired from James Fergusson Books & Manuscripts an archive of papers related to David Lindsay compiled by the writer Hugh Cecil. He corresponded with Lindsay’s family, friends and admirers, and also interviewed some of them. The collection consists of a dozen or so ring binders full of letters, interview notes, press cuttings and other items.

At first, Cecil may have hoped to write a Lindsay biography, but later he seems to have decided there was no market for this alone, and so he intended to write a book of two parts, one on L.H. Myers and one on David Lindsay, or else a study of ‘David Lindsay & His Admirers’, with specific reference to the writers E.H. Visiak, L.H. Myers and J.B. Pick and the artist Robert Barnes.

‘A book on Lindsay would never sell . . .,’ he wrote to J.B. Pick in 1967, ‘A book on Myers would however . . . and a book on Myers and Lindsay is a possibility – a book in 2 halves.’ His reasoning was that Myers had a more eventful life, and he may have also thought that Myers had more acceptance in the literary world.

Though there is a quantity of research material, a tribute to Cecil’s thoroughness and persistence, there is very little continuous text at all, only notes, so it appears the biography was never written. However, there are several interesting sidelights.

When I began to look through the papers I found an enigmatic reference that seemed to reveal something of importance previously unknown, to me at least, about Lindsay’s career as a writer. At the back of a red binder labelled ‘Writings, Reviews etc on Lindsay’s work by—’,  followed by a list of names, there was a single sheet of typed paper, which began ‘P.S.’ The letter to which it was apparently a postscript did not precede it and was not in the same file, nor was there any indication of the author. But Cecil clearly thought it was important, and all credit to him for finding and preserving this information.

It reads as follows:

P.S. Reading University sent me copy report on Devil’s Tor, which calls it ‘a very ponderous pudding’ and adds ‘The author is a bird of passage and has published with both Methuen and Long.’

            The books submitted to Chatto & Windus were called ‘Altheus’ [sic] and ‘The Confessions of an Egoist.’

            Aletheus [sic] submitted in 1902, Egoist in 1908.

            The first is simply described as ‘an excessively long tale’ and the second as ‘The confessions of an intellectual young man who traces the progress of his mind from rank materialism to an exalted idealism.’ Says it won’t interest the general reader but ‘the book is promising and shows considerable intellectual vigour.’ There is then the comment ‘The book is very well written.’ One wonders, so one does.

With reference to the word ‘Aletheus’ there is a manuscript note, ‘Alethius?’

There are no books with either of these titles in the catalogues of the major libraries. The clear inference from the context was that these two novels were also by David Lindsay and submitted to Chatto & Windus: no other author is named. I wished this was more explicitly stated in the note, but it seemed the most natural reading. If so, this meant that Lindsay wrote at least two earlier novels before the novel thought to have been his first, his masterpiece A Voyage to Arcturus (1920). The first of these would have been when he was about 26, the other when he was about 32.

This inference was reinforced by a point in the Chronology of David Lindsay that Hugh Cecil compiled. Under the year 1919, Cecil notes that Lindsay started his ‘first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus’. But he has then inserted in manuscript the word ‘published’ so that the entry reads ‘first published novel’. This implies Cecil knew there was earlier but unpublished work.

Unfortunately, the Reading University Library document quoted in the P.S. does not seem to be in the Archive. There is a folder of photocopies of contemporary press reviews of Devil’s Tor, but the publisher’s report is not included in this.

I therefore turned to the source cited by Cecil. Reading University’s Special Collections has a major holding of Chatto & Windus papers, which it acquired in 1982 (so the postscript must post-date then). This includes a number of ‘Manuscript entry books’, essentially a log of manuscripts received by the publisher, typically listing ‘Date received, title, author and address for each manuscript received, reader's report number, dates received and returned, note of acceptance or decline, comments.’

With the Library’s kind help, I was able to confirm the manuscript entry book for the period 9 May 1907-13 Jul 1910 includes an entry for ‘Lindsay, David, p.176’, showing that he did submit a manuscript entitled The Confessions of an Egoist to them, and the report was as quoted in the postscript. Also, the manuscript entry book for 25 Jun 1901-26 Aug 1904 has a record of another manuscript, which was presumably Altheus. A later manuscript entry book, for 29 Dec 1926-14 Oct 1929 shows also that he submitted Devil’s Tor to them in 1928 (uncatalogued reader's report number 3575). This was later published by Putnam’s, in 1932, at the instigation of Lindsay’s friend L.H. Myers.

Sadly, for the pre-First World War novels, the manuscript entry book notes are all we are ever likely to know of the readers’ reports. The Library advise: ‘Unfortunately, as Chatto & Windus sent loose paper for salvage to help with the war effort in 1915, we have very few reader's reports before 1915 (only a couple for 1913 and 1914), and there aren't any original reports for the titles that you are looking for . . . [from] 1902 and 1908.’

We may reasonably conclude, though, despite this brief evidence, that there were indeed at least two earlier David Lindsay novels. What happened to them?  Lindsay’s papers were at first mostly in the care of J.B. Pick, his great admirer, and the friend of Lindsay’s wife Jacky, but were later returned to Diana Moon, the Lindsays’ oldest daughter, with the exception of The Witch, since Pick was still working on the version of the novel he edited (1976). Hugh Cecil corresponded regularly with Pick and they became friends, but I have found no allusion to the earlier novels. If Pick had them, Cecil would no doubt have obtained copies: his files do include full photocopies of Lindsay’s A Blade for Sale and of the Christmas play he wrote for his children. We have to conclude, therefore, that Pick did not have them.

Douglas A. Anderson offers a helpful insight into Lindsay’s practice with his manuscripts:

‘Lindsay's habit seems to have been to discard manuscripts once published, or once revised (e.g. the longer versions of Arcturus and Haunted Woman do not exist, nor the original version of Devil's Tor, The Ancient Tragedy).  Of The Witch, there is his working typescript, plus a version of the final chapter of a previous version of the book, most of which has a vertical cross-out over the text, though a dozen or so paragraphs do not. The Violet Apple, however, survived as a clean typescript to be published in 1976. Of his "Sketch Notes' they are reportedly compiled from his notebooks, which he apparently discarded after he compiled the notes.  So if he wasn't able to publish the two earlier novels, or became dissatisfied with them, it would not be out of character for him to discard them.’ 

It is fascinating but tantalising to learn that Lindsay was writing fiction well before A Voyage to Arcturus, which he started in 1919. It gives a different perspective on his literary career. Though it does not in the least detract from the originality and power of his masterpiece, it shows that this did not come out of nowhere. Whether either Altheus or The Confessions of an Egoist were in any sense an early run at the Arcturus theme, we shall, alas, never know. Unfortunately, it seems likeliest these apparent early novels by Lindsay are lost, and we are left only with our wondering and imagining of what they might have been.

(Mark Valentine)

With many thanks to Babs Viejo and Danni Corfield at Special Collections, Reading, and Esmé Bonner of Penguin Random House Archive & Library for their very kind help, and to Douglas A. Anderson for his insights.