Tea and Gargoyles

   

Tea and Gargoyles is a seventh selection of essays from Tartarus Press, just announced. I start by discussing stories and novels that are ‘on the margins’ of the uncanny, which are often more interesting than more overt treatments, looking at several obscure or overlooked examples, as well as work by Robert Aickman, Walter de la Mare, and the witchcraft novels of Gladys Mitchell.   

The twenty-nine essays also explore 17^th century booksellers’ signs, a forgotten Edwardian poet of the fantastic, a mid-Victorian prophet and crystal-gazer, esoteric books and records of the Nineteen Seventies, the early literature of mah jongg books and the game’s links to a ring-tailed lemur, and liminal, otherworldly landscape.

There is an affectionate pastiche of the fiction of Barbara Pym, a celebration of imaginary books in fiction, and a treasury of odd facts and incidents found in passing in a wide miscellany of books. As usual, there are several reports of bookshop expeditions and the odd volumes encountered on these. 

About a dozen of the pieces are previously unpublished, and others have appeared only in small edition journals.

Tea and Gargoyles is first published in a limited hardcover edition of 350 copies.  

(Mark Valentine)