Carcosa Revisited

In the early 1980s, I discovered to my liking a number of recently published stories bylined "Galad Elflandsson." I'm not sure which exact story I first encountered, but it seems likely to have been "Night Rider on a Pale Horse," published in The Phoenix Tree (1980), edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski.  The blurb about the author told me of other stories to look for, in various (often Canadian) small press magazines, and also of the short novel The Black Wolf, published by Donald M. Grant in 1979, and illustrated by Randy Broecker.  I picked up the stories as I could find them, exchanged several letters with the author (who kindly supplied more information and more stories), and I looked forward to more publications in the future. But around 1987 Elflandsson ceased writing and publishing.

One of his early projects had been a series of stories (and a few poems) based on Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow.  He had submitted the collection to Donald M. Grant in 1978, and from it Grant asked him to rewrite and expand one longer story, "The Cave of the Hill Beast." Minus the Carcosa references, and adding some Lovecraftian ones, it became The Black Wolf.  Some of the other Carcosa tales appeared in various magazines.

Late last year, Graeme Phillips with his Cyaegha Press resurrected most of the Carcosa tales in an elegant trade paperback volume, Tales of Carcosa, with a cover and interior illustrations by Steve Lines.  It contains two poems and five stories (one a previously unpublished short, "An Augury") and a new "Afterword" by the author.  The edition is small (four lettered and fifty numbered copies), so act quickly if you are interested.  There is no web page specifically for Tales of Carcosa, but the Cyaegha magazine web page (hosted at Glynn Owen Barrass's Strange Aeons site), with contact email for Cyaegha in the short introductory paragraph, can be found here.  Send Graeme an email for ordering details. 

Update 6/28/19: Tales of Carcosa is now officially out of print.

In Search of the Unknown by Robert W. Chambers

Our friends at Le Visage Vert have recently released the definitive French edition of Robert W. Chamber's fix-up, In Search of the Unknown (1904), which combines six previously published Chambers stories into a novel.  Here it is translated by Jean-Daniel Brèque, with a nice cover illustration by Marc Brunier-Mestas.  But the added material is what makes this edition special.  Michel Meurger contributes a forty-five page afterword on "The Lost World of the Bronx Park", which is heavily illustrated and gives the background for Chambers's zoological researchers in his novel.  Xavier Legrand-Ferronnière adds a bibliographical appendix which cites all of the appearances of the six stories, from their first appearances in periodicals on to reprints in later anthologies.  As usual with LVV productions, this is a bibliophiliac's delight.  Ordering information and other details at their website here (scroll down). 

The color frontispiece, showing the original cover

Illustrations from the magazine appearances of "The Harbour-Master"

Robert W. Chambers's Artwork for The King in Yellow

I've long understood that some of the artwork that appears on various covers of editions (but not the first printing) of The King in Yellow (1895) by Robert W. Chambers, was believed to be based on artwork by Chambers himself.  At last the evidence has emerged!  It comes in the form of original artwork by Chambers for a publicity poster from 1895, from the estate of Forrest J. Ackerman.  A truly gorgeous poster!

A close-up shows the signature in the mountains to the right:

Here you can see a few of the modified versions that appear on books, including a later printing of the Neely edition and the Ace paperback from the 1960s:

For information about the restoration of the original artwork, there is an article here.

Chambers's own color-scheme is infinitely more seductive. I'd really like to see more of Chambers's own art.

Temperamental Authors

I recently acquired an issue of the magazine supplement to the old New York World newspaper of the 1920s.  Specifically, I got this issue, dated 6 February 1927, because it has a journalistic story by Leonard Cline that is completely new to me, but there turned out to be bonus:  an illustrated article headed "Behind the Scenes in Temperamental Authors' Workshops" by Sarah Macdougall.  Basically, the authoress solicited comments from a bunch of authors of the day, ranging from the noted (Sinclair Lewis, Rebecca West, Ellen Glasgow) to the less-known and now forgotten (e.g., Homer Croy, and Lulu Vollmer, the author of "Sun Up" and "The Shame Woman", who "does all of her writing on an ironing-board which fits across the arms of a wing chair in her studio home"). Some of the authors who provided comments are remembered for their fantasy writings:

Irvin S. Cobb was the first to be interviewed, because his day starts at eight in the morning and because the only time to ask him questions is before he leaves his Park Avenue home. "I don't like to work at all," said Mr. Cobb. "I'd never work if I didn't have to. When I do work, which is every day, I sit wherever there is a place to sit, take a pen, a pencil or a typewriter--in the city, in the country, on a train, on a ship, and I work. I have no moods. I don't need to have the light over my left shoulder. The only thing I need is an idea. I am always at work early in the morning. I was raised on an afternoon paper and I do my best work before noon. I never work at night. I do not care who is around while I am working. Ordinary noises of the city do not bother me in the least."

Robert W. Chambers is another man who does not like to work. But few Wall Street men toil such long hours as this author whose fiction has brought him as much wealth as if he were a successful financier. Mr. Chambers does his year's work in the winter months so that he may be free to play all summer. He does most of his writing in New York because he finds fewer interruptions in the city than in the country, and fewer distractions for the author. He finds October and November the best time to work in the country, "because every one else is in town." Mr. Chambers never works at night, and he is always on hand for a dinner party.

Lord Dunsany's plays have been written with quill pens. In Ireland he shoots geese for recreation. He takes the quils to London, and on his desk in his home in Cadogan Square a dozen quills are crowded in a jar. 

 The illustration of Dunsany is reproduced above.  Either the artist was ignorant or misinformed, but no type of goose has a green head.  Presumably the artist was drawing a common mallard, but that's a duck, not a goose. And a duck feather would not be as handy to use as a writing instrument as a goose feather, which is significantly larger.