Even the most celebrated of classic ghost story writers could use a bit of a boost to their visibility these days. British author Algernon Blackwood was essentially a celebrity in the early twentieth century. Revered for his contributions to the ghost story and weird fiction genres, he became a household name toward the end of his life when he shared his stories through popular radio and early television broadcasts. Today, he is best known for two stories in particular, “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” But these two tales are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his prolific career of both fiction and nonfiction writing that spans almost half a century. Publisher Handheld Press and editor Henry Bartholomew seek to introduce a wider audience to the breadth of Blackwood’s talents with a new collection, The Unknown: Weird Writings, 1900–1937, which came out last week.
The Unknown takes a unique approach to collecting Blackwood’s writings, organized around the thesis that Blackwood’s fiction is especially biographical—i.e. that his short stories parallel his actual lived experiences as well as the major themes and questions that preoccupied his mind and guided his life choices. To illustrate this connection, the collection pairs examples of Blackwood’s weird fiction with relevant selections from his nonfiction, grouping the pieces by theme. The book opens with an introduction by editor Henry Bartholomew that provides background information about Algernon Blackwood’s life, highlighting his interests in the occult and in nature, his love of traveling and outdoor winter sports, and his philosophies pertaining to both religion and writing. The introduction also lays out the structure of the collection and the thought process behind selecting and organizing the works included. The collection is broken down into four sections that each center on a recurring theme or setting in Blackwood’s writings: Canada, Mountains, Reincarnation, and Imagination. Each of these sections consists of one nonfiction piece on the subject, followed by two thematically connected short stories, for a total of four essays and eight tales. I really enjoyed this organizational system. Not only does it draw attention to the importance of recurring themes I might not have otherwise picked up on, but it puts Blackwood’s works in conversation with each other, across genres and different periods of his life. Once again, Handheld Press hits it out of the park, demonstrating that organizing a collection or anthology is itself a creative act that can showcase an author or genre in a new light.
My favorite stories in this collection were two that involve young male protagonists whose sense of reality is disrupted by an alluring woman. The first of these is “The Glamour of the Snow” from the “Mountain” section of the book. The story is a delightfully weird horror piece set amongst the tourist community of the Valais Alps and the burgeoning world of winter sports. It centers on a young writer who finds his love of the natural world—expressed through a proclivity for skiing and ice skating up the mountains—in conflict with his relationship to his fellow tourists or the local peasants. One night while skating alone in the dark, he meets a mysterious woman who seems to embody everything he loves about this wintry climate. She tempts him in the same way that the snowy mountains do—and is just as dangerous. He learns this the hard way one night when he blindly follows her out into the snow… A young man is similarly entranced in “The Tarn of Sacrifice,” from the section on “Reincarnation,” although in this case the danger doesn’t come directly from the woman herself. John Holt, a young WWI veteran is backpacking through the Lake District when he hears about a strange man and his daughter who live by the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall—the famous fortifications from the Roman conquest of Britain. When he comes upon the young woman, Holt is struck by a strong sense that they were lovers in a past life. She, meanwhile, is fully immersed in her Roman past life, dressing in Roman artifacts and scrying for visions in her Mystery Stone. The more time that Holt spends with the woman, the more immersed he becomes in the narrative that they were once captives, taken by the pagans in their war against the Romans. But as wonderful as it is to be reunited with a lost love, he will need to break out of this trance if he doesn’t want to come to the same bloody end as before.
Both of the above stories engender horror through particularly unique plotlines, but Blackwood traffics in more traditional Gothic tropes, as well. You can find a potentially unreliable narrator in his other reincarnation story “The Insanity of Jones.” The other mountain story, “The Sacrifice,” involves a strange doppelganger who appears to the protagonist in the form of a priest to take him on a journey of self-revelation. And lastly, Blackwood makes clever use of an ominous prophecy in the final tale of the collection, “By Water,” in which a young lover fails to properly heed a clairvoyant’s warning about his impending death.
If you’re a fan of early twentieth-century weird fiction, or if you, like me, simply love a skillful and carefully arranged collection of short stories, then The Unknown is definitely one to add to your list! You can order a copy directly from the UK-based publisher Handheld Press or order it from this Bookshop.org affiliate link and support The Gothic Library in the process. Once you’ve read it, let me know your favorite story in the comments!