Old Novels and the Women Who Owned Them
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Monday, June 13, 2022
Aickman Posts: Offshoots of R.B. Russell's Biography of Aickman
Some Thoughts on the Writing of Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography 13 January 2022
Robert Aickman at the Barbican 13 May 2022
Friday, June 3, 2022
First Signs of A Slight Decline in Secondhand Bookshops in Britain
In my first post on The Rise of Secondhand Bookshops in Britain, in 2017, I suggested that the story of a decline in the number wasn't (then) supported by the facts. I also discussed the reasons why the story persists.
In July last year I reported on the welcome return in June of The Book Guide, which lists second-hand bookshops in Britain (and Ireland), together with reviews by customers.
This invaluable resource had earlier made it possible to see that, contrary to popular belief, the number of second-hand bookshops in the UK had increased by about 25% over a thirty year period, not declined. The Guide had listed around 1,187 bookshops in the UK in 2017, compared to 942 in Driff’s exhaustive guide of 1984: and their scope was broadly similar.
We can now review the position after 12 months of the relaunched guide. Sadly, about 117 bookshops have closed over the year. By contrast, I count about 47 newly opened or newly discovered shops that have been notified. The net change is therefore minus 70. That is for the first time a significant fall, as distinct from minor changes in the ups and downs of the total.
The guide depends entirely on volunteer information as readers get out and about visiting, and reporting on, what they find. It could be that there are more closures yet to be reported, though there may also be newly opened shops too.
Even so, it is worth reminding ourselves that in historical terms the total is still among the highest. There are still 1,021 or so secondhand bookshops in the UK, compared to Driff’s 942 of 38 years ago.
Note: The latest post on this subject is The Rise and Fall of Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain.
(Mark Valentine)
Monday, May 30, 2022
The Guiltless Bystander - David Wheldon
His particular quality was the ability to write about seemingly realistic scenes in a way that gave them a remorseless, unreal atmosphere, like a slow, insidious nightmare (in which nevertheless there are moments of unexpected if brief relief). For this reason he was often compared with Kafka, although I think the author himself was not so sure of this identification
I wrote then:
'This author achieved success with his first novel, The Viaduct (1983), and a second, The Course of Instruction (1984), both of which impressed me a good deal at the time.
I remember that I was actually on a course of instruction when I read this second book in the rather dreary digs where I was staying. This was possibly not a good move, as I started to feel that the book and what then passed for reality were beginning to overlap a bit too closely. Nevertheless, I got each one of the following books as they appeared, each getting stranger and somehow more remote, until they seemed to stop altogether. So it is good to learn of this thoughtful author's return to publication, and I will seek the story out with a keen appreciation, not to say apprehension'.
The news of an entire volume of his stories brings even further opportunities for appreciation - and apprehension.
(Mark Valentine)
Monday, May 9, 2022
The Last Wormwood
Wormwood 38 has just been announced. It includes:
The Wormwood Interview - Rosemary Pardoe, Jamesian scholar and founding editor of Ghosts & Scholars, responds to seven questions about the books in her life
J W Brodie-Innes – Peter Bell discusses the leading figure in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and author of novels on witchcraft and Scottish folklore
Forrest Reid and Jocelyn Brooke – John Howard explores the landscape of childhood in these two lyrical writers
Charles Dickens and the ghost story – Thomas Kent Miller on Dickens’ role in creating a strong demand for festive and wintry ghostly yarns
The Seeds – Iain Smith discusses the music of the Sixties psychedelic band who made vivid use of Gothic and fantastical imagery
Laidlaw Books – Douglas A Anderson presents his original research into the publisher of Donald Armour, as well as books by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis
Marcel Proust – Henry Wessells reminds us that the author had affinities with the Decadent movement, particularly in his persona as the contemplative dandy
Reggie Oliver reviews a new translation of work by a late 19th century French occultist; R B Russell’s biography of Robert Aickman; an illustrated history of the Gothic; and a novel with an M R James-inspired title
John Howard reviews five books from independent presses, illustrating the willingness of smaller publishers to take on stranger work
This is the last Wormwood, and we’d like to thank all our contributors and readers for their support over the years.
(NB: Wormwoodiana is not affected)
(Mark Valentine)
Saturday, April 30, 2022
The Shipley Canal Fantasy Mural
Anyone walking along the canal towpath from the Victorian model village of Saltaire to the neighbouring town of Shipley will soon come across an unusual sight.
Under a gloomy tunnel at Fox Corner, with pigeons nesting in the eaves, mellifluously cooing to each other, there is a colourful mural full of fantasy motifs - a jester, a dragon, a fairy-tale castle, courtly ladies, a knight, a tree-woman.
It looks for all the world like the album cover for a 1970s progressive rock LP, or the design for a Pan Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperback. We wondered when we first saw it if it indeed dated from those heady times.
There isn't all that much about it online but one of the five participating artists, Dave Cogan, has posted a couple of comments (scroll down the link to see this one) which explain the background. He recalls that it was a project in February 1993 led by mural artist Tom Cousins.
The latter's website explains that he once lived and worked in Bradford (the nearest city to Shipley) and did other murals there, but is now based in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, still creating murals.
Tom had got permission from the waterways board, and a local firm provided the paints, but even so there was some opposition from councillors and the press. Despite that, the mural is now one of the sights of the canal walk and, as Dave Cogan says, certainly brightens up a rather grim, dingy tunnel.
It is just the sort of eccentric, fanciful, delightful, bizarre and cheering public art that ought to be cherished and preserved.
(Mark Valentine: Photographs: Jo Valentine)
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Ghosts in the Machine
Ghosts in the Machine is an exhibition of black & white images hosted by Bower Ashton Library, Bristol, for World Book Night 2022. Contributors were invited to create an image responding to the theme and also to name a favourite ghost story.
These included stories by M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Pierre de Ronsard, Fritz Lieber, Toni Morrison, Jan Pienkowski, Pu Songling, Astrid Lindgren, Aoko Matsuda, Stanisław Herman Lem and Daphne du Maurier.
There were 93 spectral contributions from participants in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, UK, and the USA.
My own contribution, ‘Phantoms’, is one of a series of manipulated pages from The English Catalogue of Books for 1937, edited by James D. Stewart (London: The Publishers’ Circular, Limited, 1938). I nominated Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser.
The exhibition runs from Weds 13th April – Weds 29th June 2022 and the complete set of images is available as a free PDF (scroll down the Ghosts in the Machine page for the link).
(Mark Valentine)
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