Thanks in turn, Doug, for names of writers new to me (Patricia
McKillip and Guy Kay). How about the Brit folklorist Meg Elizabeth
Atkins? I love the background characterization of the detective
in her series, with his country cottage inherited from an aunt who
was one of the alleged portal guardians between this world and the
Other, his half-sister who dies in the course of assisting a magus
attempting to gain immortality via a fifth-element-type ritual,
and his fling with an undead woman who doesn't know she's one--
wonderful meditations on the folk and lore of the English village
and countryside.
To fill in a gap I left yesterday: Carole G. Silver's (OUP, 1999)
study of Victorian lit. & art is _Strange and Secret Peoples:
Fairies and Victorian Consciousness_. Oxford also published (in
1998) a very nice collection of _Twelve Irish Ghost Stories_,
edited by Patricia Craig and including such classics as C.F.
Alexander's "Legend of Stumpie's Brae," Le Fanu's "Account of
Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," Moore's "Play-House
in the Waste," and Bowen's "Happy Autumn Fields," among others.
(Bowen's "Demon Lover" gets discussed by Paul Muldoon in _To
Ireland, I_, btw--a fascinating study of Irish literary
influences on Joyce's "The Dead," especially the fey ones.) "The
Prisoner" by independence-movement/civil-war historian Dorothy
McCardle is also included in _Twelve Irish Ghost Stories_, which
reminds me to recommend her classic novel of the supernatural,
_The Uninvited_--a pretty good movie of which is available on
video--as is one of the very best (IMHO) 1990s films with a
supernatural theme (but without anything Freddy- or Jason-esque):
_The White Lady_.
Carroll & Graf brought out a big anthology of 20th c. ghost stories
in 1999 called _Nightshade_ and edited by Robert Phillips. It's a
good collection, I think, with some unexpected contributions by such
mainstream/literary fiction writers as Alison Lurie, Jean Rhys, and
Muriel Spark, along with those you'd expect to find, like Bowen,
(H.) James, L.P. Hartley, William Trevor, and Shirley Jackson (plus
one hoary old howler, Kipling's "They").
Finally, I wanted to mention a fairly new press that's dedicated to
bringing "midlist" genre fiction of certain types, including horror,
back into print. You can check out the dozen offerings (so far) of
Stealth Press at its rather hilariously espionaged website:
http://www.stealthpress.com
where I was pleased to see Peter Straub's second novel, _Under Venus_,
which has been unavailable for so long that it's become known among
his fans as his "secret novel." It's a savvy take on late-'60s US
culture, apart from its timeless gothic quality. Stealth is also
offering a reprint of that splatterpunk classic by Skipp & Spector,
_The Light at the End_, and the first book in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's
Saint-Germain series, _Hotel Transylvania_.
Happy hauntings,
Candice
Doug Barbour wrote:
>Thanks Candice for the mention of Brit novelist Gwendolyn Butler's Coffin
>series, as the books sound really interesting.
>
>Peter Straub is not only a fine writer, but also one who is very up to date
>on contemporary poetry, some of which he often quotes as epigraphs...
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