Weird Fiction discussion

For the month of November we will be doing a Classic Weird read. This means the book needs to have been published before 1990 to qualify, and probably no earlier than 1923.

Feel free to make your nomination any time from now through October 17. If you nominate a book now, but change your mind and want to nominate a different one by October 17, you can. Simply edit your original post. So may I suggest you go ahead and make your nomination, lest you forget in the meantime?

I seldom get excited about PhD theses, but there is one available online I would like to draw your attention to titled "Dark Matter: British Weird Fiction and the Substance of Horror, 1880-1927". It's by a UCLA doctoral student, freely available here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ns5...

Now Dr. Anthony Christopher Camara centers his thesis on four figures: Vernon Lee, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and William Hope Hodgson. The last three I have heard of, certainly, but the first one took me by surprise. All four are identified as being instrumental in altering the Gothic Romance and Victorian Ghost Story into a new form: Weird Fiction.

You can read Wikipedia's article on her, but it's not that revealing. I found the most tantalizing part the "Critical Reception" segment: The English writer and translator Montague Summers described Vernon Lee as "the greatest [...] of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction." Summers also compared Lee's work to that of M. R. James. E. F. Bleiler has claimed that "Lee's stories are really in a category by themselves. Intelligent, amusingly ironic, imaginative, original, they deserve more than the passing attention that they have attracted". Neil Barron described the contents of Lee's collection Hauntings thus "The stories are powerful and very striking, among the finest of their kind."

The PhD thesis, chapter one, goes into depth on her contribution. It has in part prompted me to really want to read Vernon Lee directly. I have found a collection of her 17 supernatural stories and two essays on the subject available on Kindle for $6.99. It has an introduction and short biography too. I'd like to nominate this for our November read in order to explore the true origin of our beloved genre.

The Complete Hauntings by Vernon Lee.

You know, it's strange. For many years two men, Verne and Wells were given credit for establishing Science Fiction. Towards the end of last century more and more people came to recognize that Mary Shelley really deserved that credit for Frankenstein. Is something similarly now happening to Weird, the genre that used to go Machen, Blackwood, Hodgson, Lovecraft, now should actually start with Vernon Lee?

Very interesting. “Hauntings” also seems to be available for free on Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9956

Dan wrote: "I seldom get excited about PhD theses, but there is one available online I would like to draw your attention to titled "Dark Matter: British Weird Fiction and the Substance of Horror, 1880-1927". I..."

How interesting! I originate from Arthur Machen country and have been a Lovecraft/Blackwood fan for many years. My own story collection has been likened to their writing which is great. However, I must also say that I've not come across Vernon Lee either.

Merl wrote: "Very interesting. “Hauntings” also seems to be available for free on Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9956"

Thanks for sharing about Gutenberg's holding.

That appears to be The Incomplete Hauntings. It contains far fewer than all 17 stories. However, that volume looks like it provides the first four stories.

Gutenberg has some of the others in other books:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/autho...

Three more of the 17 early Weird stories come from Vanitas: Polite Stories. One of her essays, "Ravenna and Her Ghosts", is in Limbo and Other Essays. So that gets at almost half!

My only concern going the Gutenberg route is that in the Introduction to The Complete Hauntings the editor points out that a number of different versions of Lee's stories appeared during her lifetime, some markedly inferior. The editor obtained what he called the best version for his collection. I'm not sure Gutenberg would have that.

Nevertheless, Gutenberg provides a good sampling for considering whether or not to read more. Also, a lot of Lee's non-genre work is of interest to me and available there. I read philosophy texts occasionally, or parts of them, and she has apparently done a lot of work in aesthetics. I've never gone much beyond neo-Platonists (Plotinus), Kant's The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, and a Ruskin essay (the same one I assume prompted Lee's interest) on the subject. Maybe she does. Also I skimmed her freely available Penelope Brandling A Tale of the Welsh coast in the Eighteenth Century and that looks good too.

Catherine wrote: "Dan wrote: "I seldom get excited about PhD theses, but there is one available online I would like to draw your attention to titled "Dark Matter: British Weird Fiction and the Substance of Horror, 1..."

We have not yet done anything with any of these five authors yet. Well, we read a few pages of Lovecraft with the first group selection back in April.

How exciting to live in Machen country. Is there something like a house or Machen Museum in your area for the public to visit? We do that sort of thing a lot for famous writers here in the US. Earlier this year I visited a house F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald spent time in. I learned a whole lot about Zelda that way. A Machen museum would make for a worthwhile visit!

My first Vernon Lee reading (yesterday) was (quite by accident) this essay: http://fullreads.com/essay/faustus-an...

I read it from first sentence to last in one sitting. Essays are not normally my reading preference, but this read like a story. My goodness, can Vernon Lee write! (This essay is also contained in my nomination for next month's reading--the final of 19 works.)

I have created a Vernon Lee discussion topic if anyone cares to continue to discuss her or her work there: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'd like to get this thread back on to the subject of nominations for our group's November Classic Weird Fiction read. Any Weird book (novel or short story collection) or short story published before 1990 is eligible. October 17, next Thursday night, is the deadline for nominations.

Dan wrote: "Catherine wrote: "Dan wrote: "I seldom get excited about PhD theses, but there is one available online I would like to draw your attention to titled "Dark Matter: British Weird Fiction and the Subs..."

Sadly there isn't. There was one museum that displayed a collection of all his works but it recently closed due to lack of funding. There is this though...http://www.arthurmachen.org.uk/machfr...

I hope the reason no other Classic Weird nomination was submitted was because everyone was so thrilled with this choice. Okay then, the winner is the earliest Weird Fiction I think it possible to read (not Poe because he would be proto-Weird, although he could still be nominated another time), Vernon Lee's supernatural work -- all of it!