Strange Stories by Irish Women Archives

Adventures in the South Seas

Conducted by John Kenny © January 2026

Mike Ashley is a major enthusiast and collector of a wide range of popular fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, and crime fiction. He has compiled or edited well over one hundred anthologies of short stories across the whole spectrum of genre fiction and has written a biography of Algernon Blackwood and a five-volume history of science fiction magazines. His Age of the Storytellers (British Library 2005) explores the British popular fiction magazines from the 1880s to the 1940s and he received the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement in science fiction scholarship in 2002 and the Edgar Award for the Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction (Robinson Publishing 2002) in 2003.

John Kenny: Tell us a little about Beatrice Grimshaw. It’s quite an achievement for a woman from Northern Ireland to fetch up in the Pacific Islands as a travel writer in the early 1900s.

Mike Ashley: It’s one of the factors that appealed to me about Grimshaw. She was clearly an adventurer, and one with a vivid imagination. She was born in Northern Ireland, where her great-grandparents had relocated from Lancashire. They were mill owners there a century before. I imagine her as quite a wilful child, with an evident wanderlust. She was an ardent cyclist in her youth, cycling for miles and miles, and the moment she could leave home—she did. She discovered she could write about her travels for the magazines and for the shipping lines’ own magazines so once she could earn her keep she travelled on the big ocean-going liners writing about where they travelled. She fell in love with the South Seas and eventually settled in what is now Papua New Guinea, and was the first white women to venture inland along the Fly and Sepik rivers.

JK: That’s quite daring, certainly back then. And was it her travels that inspired her to write fiction? Or was she doing so before she left these shores?

MA: She had written some fiction, but not much. Her writings were mostly journalism, reviews, and articles for various Irish magazines and newspapers. But once she reached the South Seas, travelling around the many islands before settling down, she was inspired, particularly by the idea of an adventurous woman amongst the travellers, settlers, and the indigenous peoples on those islands—Samoa, Fiji, the New Hebrides, Papua, and so on. She had immediate success with her first South Seas novel, Vaiti of the Islands, which was serialised in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Saturday Evening Post in 1906, and was picked up by the British Pearson’s Magazine in 1907. It concerns a young woman who becomes a “native queen”.

JK: I wonder if there was an element of wish fulfilment with regard to becoming a “native queen”. What do you think it was that fascinated Grimshaw about the indigenous islanders of the South Sea?

MA: I’m not sure it was wish fulfilment as much as day-dreaming or that sense of wonder we all have. She became fascinated by the indigenous people, and though in her writings she betrayed the typical racist attitudes of the day, she also seems to have had a lot of respect for the islanders and their various beliefs. She came to believe that the islanders had an entirely different outlook to western civilisation, freed, as it was, from our class structure and constrictive histories—especially in Catholic Ireland. The islanders were much closer to the land and nature, and though she never witnessed anything that was overtly supernatural, she could sense their abilities to understand the natural world in a way that she couldn’t, and it could easily be interpreted as a supernatural power. That affinity with the natural world comes through in many of her stories, often to the detriment of the white settlers.

JK: Yes, that racism is evident in a few of the stories in Strange South Seas, particularly “The Long, Long Day” and “The Blanket Fiend”. And “The Devil’s Smithy” revolves around the work of a Christian Mission in the Sheba Islands. What were Grimshaw’s views regarding the concept of “civilising natives” that was prevalent at the time?

MA: Racism in any form is abhorrent to me, but it’s not something you can simply hide, because it was so prevalent during the period Grimshaw was writing. I find myself torn between including the various comments or deleting them, as that borders on censorship. My general view is that such comments should stay. To my mind if a story contains no redeeming values, then I’d rather not reprint the story at all, but if the racist comments are limited then I’d rather run them as is than attempt to change them. And she certainly did not support the view of “civilising natives”. Whilst some of her comments are racist, she also had a lot of respect for the indigenous islanders and believed their culture and beliefs should be preserved.

JK: I do think it’s possible to read something that’s very much of its time and enjoy it while not condoning abhorrent aspects of the story. This is certainly the case with “The Blanket Fiend”, perhaps the most swashbuckling story in Strange South Seas, and reminiscent of H. Rider Haggard. Would she have been familiar with his work?

MA: Grimshaw never said much about her own reading habits, leastways not in the books I have. I do have her “memoirs”, such as they are, which are really about her travels, but for the moment I can’t lay my hands on it. But in general I’d say it’s pretty certain she would have read something by Haggard, because he was someone almost everyone read at the time. I know she was well read but I don’t know how much that influenced her writing. I do know she was influenced by the Australian writer Louis Becke (1855-1913), who was well steeped in the magic of the Pacific.

JK: Two stories in this collection, “Through the Back Door” and “Lost Wings”, struck me as positively Bradburyesque, both in their premises and the wistful quality of the writing. Do you think this lyricism was engendered by her surroundings?

MA: “Through the Back Door” is one of my real favourites of her work. I think all her stories were inspired by her surroundings but I suspect that story had other factors that influenced it. Without giving too much away it deals with choices and whether we might want to relive our lives and maybe make any changes. I suspect most people think that at one time or another and I can’t help but wonder what was going through Grimshaw’s mind, or perhaps recent experiences, which prompted her to explore that idea. I hadn’t thought about those stories being Bradburyesque, but I think you’re right. They show how fiction can elevate our thoughts and, if needed, serve as therapy. Both these stories are, to my mind, therapeutic.

JK: Another aspect of her writing that really appeals to me is the vividness of her descriptions of island habitats. I’m thinking particularly of “The Singing Ghost” and “The Devil’s Smithy”, as well as “The Flaming Sword” and the aforementioned “Lost Wings”.

MA: Grimshaw travelled throughout the South Sea islands and became aware of life and culture in all these localities and you can tell that one of the reasons she wrote was to bring these locales alive. She doesn’t just present a setting and a story—the story is intrinsic to the surroundings and beliefs.

JK: The respect she has for the indigenous islanders is there for the islands themselves and that comes through in “The Cave”, which does not look kindly on prospectors syphoning off their resources. It’s one of the more genuinely chilling pieces in this collection.

MA: “The Cave” was the first story I read by Grimshaw, which I thought highly original. At the time I couldn’t find anything else by her and it wasn’t until I developed my magazine collection, especially the British Pearson’s and the American Blue Book, that I encountered more of her work and was fascinated by the originality of the stories and how they brought the locations and cultures alive.

JK: Speaking of your search for the stories that make up Strange South Seas, how much of Grimshaw’s work did you have to read through to unearth the contents of this collection? Writers of her generation would have written across multiple genres and magazines and didn’t seem to distinguish between them.

MA: I think the total tally of Grimshaw’s stories is around 250. I’m missing perhaps thirty of those, but I read—or skim-read if I realised it wasn’t good enough or not enough fantasy—most of the other two hundred or so. I have her short story collections and read most of those twenty to thirty years ago but I still re-read those I remembered fondly. The fun part is checking out those I had in magazines but had never got round to reading and discovering something special from time to time. I didn’t do this all at once it’s been spread over years, but I went back and re-read maybe forty to whittle it down.

JK: That’s still quite an amount of reading. Perhaps the most uncanny of the stories in Strange South Seas is “The Forest of Lost Men”. Grimshaw really was capable of writing properly scary stories.

MA: I think “The Forest of Lost Men” is the closest she came to demonstrating the strangeness of the islanders’ abilities. And that otherness becomes tangible.

JK: The final story, “A Friend in Ghostland”, is a wonderful choice to round out Strange South Seas. Gentle, beautifully written, and understatedly lyrical in its delivery. Did Grimshaw ever try her hand at poetry?

MA: I’ve not encountered much by way of verse though you’re right, she could have been a good poet. Her very first appearance in print was with a poem, “To the Princess of Wales” in the Girl’s Own Paper in 1885 and I know of one other, so there may be more tucked away in minor magazines.

JK: Finally, do we know much about Grimshaw’s later life, after she moved to Papua? Did she continue to write?

MA: There is no real “later life”. She stayed in Papua as long as she could and then settled back in Australia in 1936 living initially with her brothers. She died there in 1953. She still wrote in those final years. Blue Book published stories right up to her death at age eighty-three. She had been increasingly ill, though. After all, her life in Papua, where she built herself a home, was hard work. She was a remarkable woman.

Buy Strange South Seas.

Irish Women Ghost Writers

The below is a response sent to the editor of the Irish Times and published on their website on 2 November 2024:

Dear Editor,

I note the recent article, “Irish Women Ghost Writers: Rediscovering Lost Voices” (30 Oct. 2024) by Jen Herron.

Characterising Irish women ghost story writers as “lost”, “forgotten”, or otherwise is misleading.

That the general reading public is not aware of particular writers does not indicate they are “lost” or “forgotten”. Indeed, the popular literary mode known as the ghost story has enjoyed a decades-long history of scholarship and publication, particularly in independent publishing. I point to the efforts of those such as Montague Summers, Lady Asquith, E. F. Bleiler, Mike Ashley, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Richard Dalby, Melissa Edmundson, Hugh Lamb, Maria Giakaniki, Janis Dawson, among others, who have devoted themselves to this field.

Publishers such as Dover, Ash-Tree, Arkham House, Sarob, Nezu, Handheld, Tartarus, etc. have long championed women writers of the supernatural. Herron will be delighted to learn that Dublin’s own Swan River Press publishes a series entitled “Strange Stories by Irish Women”. In fact, the names Herron lists in her article mirrors very closely the contents of our anthology, Bending to Earth, reviewed in your publication (29 June 2019): Katharine Tynan, Ethna Carbery, Rosa Mulholland, B. M. Croker, L. T. Meade, Lady Wilde, Clotilde Graves, Dora Sigerson Shorter, Beatrice Grimshaw, and the much-celebrated and decidedly not “lost” Charlotte Riddell.

While the general popularity of the ghost story may not be as pervasive as an enthusiast might wish—though less so this time of year!—it is always enjoyable to read accounts of those who discover for themselves the pleasing terrors of this established and celebrated literary tradition. There is more work yet to be done . . .

Sincerely,
Brian J. Showers
Swan River Press

Anyone who would like to investigate more closely these remarkable writers, you are invited to have a look at this poster we designed entitled “Strange Stories by Irish Women“. And if you’re still looking for more, our journal, The Green Book: Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, running now for over a decade, features not only all those names listed in Herron’s article, but additional ones including Althea Gyles, Ella Young, Charlotte Stoker, Keith Fleming, Dorothy Macardle, Anna Maria Hall, Mary Frances McHugh and others.

“How I Write My Books”: An Interview with Mrs. L. T. Meade

Despite her wide contributions to genre literature, Irish author L. T. Meade is now remembered, if at all, for her girls’ school stories. However, in 1898 the Strand Magazine, famous for its fictions of crime, detection, and the uncanny, proclaimed Meade one of its most popular writers for her contributions to its signature fare. Her stories, widely published in popular fin de siècle magazines, included classic tales of the supernatural, but her specialty was medical or scientific mysteries featuring doctors, scientists, occult detectives, criminal women with weird powers, unusual medical interventions, fantastic scientific devices, murder, mesmerism, and manifestations of insanity. Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures is the first collection to showcase the best of her pioneering strange fiction.

Mrs. L. T. Meade has probably written a greater number of stories than any other living author. A healthy tone pervades all her works, and her pictures of English home life in particular are among the best of their kind. Calling on the novelist (writes our Special Commissioner) at her City office, I found her at her desk hard at work. Her personality is like her writings—bright, fresh, vivacious; and to say that she is of a well-favoured countenance is to understate the fact. She retains much of her girlish appearance, though a rather worn look about the eyes suggests midnight oil and an ever-active brain. Knowing how Mrs. Meade values her time, I plunged at once into the subject of my visit by remarking that nowadays people take a very friendly interest in those who delight and instruct them by their writings, they like to know how their favourite books are written; and asked whether she was willing to satisfy this natural curiosity.

“I shall be happy to tell you anything you want to know,” she replied in a soft, musical voice. “As to how my books are written, well, I simply get a thought and work it out. I have no particular method of writing. My stories grow a good deal as I write them. I don’t think the plot out very carefully in advance. My children’s stories, for instance, before they are written, are, as a rule, first told to my own children to amuse them—at least, I have tried that plan since the children have become old enough to be interested in them, and I have found it very successful; as a rule, what one child likes, another child will like. I write my stories a good deal because the publisher wants the book; I simply write it to order, and, of course, if he asks for a girl’s story he gets it, and if he asks for a novel or children’s story he gets that. I may say that I am a very quick writer; I produce four or five books in a season. I have written in less than three months a rather important three-volume novel.”

“Do you ever take your characters from real life?”

“Yes, but not intentionally. I don’t deliberately say I will put such a character here or there; I take traits rather than a whole character. I find that deliberately setting my mind to delineate a certain character produces considerable stiffness, and the character is not so fresh. Authors are a good deal governed by their characters in writing fiction. If your book is to be successful, your characters guide you rather than you guide your characters; they are so very living and real that you have not complete control over them.”

“Your experience, then, is similar to that of Charles Dickens and some living writers, who have stated that their characters become their masters, and, as it were, take their destiny into their own hands?”

“Exactly. I find it a good plan, when a novel is in process, after a certain stage, to cut out every character that is not intensely alive. I am now speaking, of course, of my larger stories; in a short story there is not room for development of character.”

“May I ask how many stories you have written?”

“I am afraid to tell you—between fifty and sixty volumes, besides a great many short stories. I have been writing now constantly for fifteen years. An enormous quantity to have produced?—so it is; I don’t know any other author who has done so much work as I have done in that time. I will give you an example. I have recently brought out four volumes (none cheaper than 3s. 6d., which gives you some idea of the size) and a three-volume novel, not to mention a complete Christmas number of the Sunday Magazine, of nearly sixty thousand words. They have certainly all been written under two years. I write on an average every day in the year a little over two thousand words; on some occasions I wrote a great deal more.”

“Do you write everything with your own hand?”

“I write nothing with my own hand—I almost forget how to write. I employ a short-hand writer, and I revise the type-written transcript.”

“Do you write at regular hours or at uncertain intervals; in other words, do you wait for an inspiration, or do you sit down and write whether you feel inclined for it or not?”

“I never wait for an inspiration.” Mrs. Meade added, with a laugh, “I might never write at all if I did. I write every day at a certain hour, and it would be impossible for me to write in the way you suggest. I have a great many books promised against a certain time. I always write against time.”

“And you find that your work does not suffer from that somewhat mechanical method?”

“I don’t think it does. I believe that to write against time puts your work into a frame, and is improved by it. To have to write a certain length, and for a certain publisher, who requires a certain kind of work, is splendid practice; it makes your brain very supple, so that you can turn to anything. It is a matter of habit with me now, and I rather like it.”

“Are you never at a loss for ideas when working under such pressure? Don’t you ever feel impoverished?”

“Sometimes, perhaps; but not as a rule. I often sit down, my secretary has a blank sheet of paper, I say, ‘Chapter I’ and that is all I know when I begin. I suppose my ideas do flow very rapidly, for some writers who are very much beyond me in power can’t write quickly. They have to think out their subjects a great deal. I could not write if I gave much labour to my work.”

“But surely you must sometimes stop and think when you are dictating?”

“No; as a rule, I dictate straight ahead continuously, and never pause for an instant. I see the whole scene, and I talk on as I see it.”

I could not help feeling that, if Mrs. Meade dictates as rapidly as she was speaking to me, her stenographer must be exceptionally expert. Her readiness and fluency were such, that of all the people I have interviewed, not one covered so much ground in so short a time. To this hard-working novelist our conversation was but a momentary interruption.

“Then you create as you speak?”

“Yes. Of course all writers must feel they do better work one day than another, but there is no day I don’t write except Sunday. Atalanta takes up a great deal of time; more than half my days are occupied with it. I have a very large life outside my books.”

A portrait of a sturdy, happy-looking youngster in cricketing costume, which his mother showed me, was an illustration in point. Mrs. Meade told me that he was the original of Daddy’s Boy—one of the most fascinating of her numerous children’s tales.

“What do you think of our English fiction of to-day?” I next inquired.

“I think fiction is at a very low ebb just now. We have no giants; but the average writer has come to a much higher pitch of excellence than was the case ten or twelve years ago. I admire Barrie immensely. I think I like him almost better than Rudyard Kipling, but I have a great admiration for both in their way. Mr. Kipling has more sting than Mr. Barrie, but Mr. Barrie’s character-drawing is inimitable. Mr. Barrie, Mr. Kipling, and Mr. Stevenson ranks first of all.”

“Still, none of them, you think, are ‘giants’?”

“I would not put them on a level with George Eliot, or Thackeray, or Dickens. We have no Dickens now, no Thackeray, no George Eliot; we have not even a Bulwer-Lytton.”

“Would you put George Eliot at the head of all women novelists?”

“Yes. I don’t think anybody else has touched her. I think Charlotte Brontë has exceeded her in some things—she has more passion; but, on the whole, I think George Eliot is greater.”

“What is your opinion of the theological novel?”

“Frankly, I don’t care for it. Edna Lyall has made a great success, and done some very fine and noble work, but I think theology in a novel is a mistake. It might be introduced, but ought not to be overdone.”

“It is bad artistically, don’t you think?”

*Swan River Press’s limited edition hardback*

“Extremely bad; absolutely wrong. I think Mrs. Humphrey Ward is not at all artistic. She is a remarkably clever woman, but she is not a fictionist. A fictionist is in her own way a painter; she writes pictures instead of painting them. I think the art of fiction is not half studied by writers; there is so much in it.”

“Do you do most of your work at home, or here in the City?”

“I write in the morning at my own house at Dulwich. I do most of my original work at home, and my editorial work here, though I have done a great deal of original work here also. I don’t go by any fixed rule. The only fixed rule in my life is that I never can get a holiday.”

“I hope that is not to be taken literally?” “Well, we are going away to-morrow for three or four days. Such an event is so rare that I can hardly believe it is coming to pass. I never get more than about a fortnight’s holiday in the year. That is mostly because of my magazine work, which, of course, never ends.”

L. T. Meade (1844-1914) was born in Bandon, Co. Cork and started writing at an early age before establishing herself as one of the most prolific and bestselling authors of the day. In addition to her popular girls’ fiction, she also penned mystery stories, sensational fiction, romances, historical fiction, and adventure novels. Her notable works include A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), and The Sorceress of the Strand (1903). She died in Oxford on 26 October 1914.

Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures is now available in both paperback and limited edition hardback from Swan River Press as part of the Strange Stories by Irish Women series.

Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers
Earth-Bound and Other Supernatural Tales by Dorothy Macardle
Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time and Other Strange Stories by Rosa Mulholland
“Number Ninety” & Other Ghost Stories by B. M. Croker
The Death Spancel and Others by Katharine Tynan
Eyes of Terror and Other Dark Adventures by L. T. Meade

Strange Stories by Irish Women

2021-14-09 Final Poster

Back in 2015, Jason Zerrillo and I designed the poster “Irish Writers of the Fantastic” as a response to the more ubiquitous “Irish Writers” poster that one often finds around Dublin. Instead of the typical faces — Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Swift, etc. — we wanted to showcase the Irish writers we enjoyed reading — those with a more fantastical bent — Le Fanu, Dunsany, Hearn, etc. Our goal was to establish a sort of lesser known canon, but a no less important one. If you want to see “Irish Writers of the Fantastic”, and read about the thought that went into it, have a look at this previous post.

With the release of Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women, edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers, we thought it would be an interesting idea to repeat the exercise. Naturally we focused on the Irish women who contributed to literature of the fantastic and whose stories are included in the book.

In addition to the image above showing the full poster, the links below will give you a bit more information on the backgrounds of these writers. And if you’re still interested, do pick up a copy of Bending to Earth.

Anna Maria Hall (1800 – 1881)

Lady Wilde (1821 – 1896)

Charlotte Riddell (1832 – 1906)

Rosa Mulholland (1841 – 1921)

L. T. Meade (1844 – 1914)

B. M. Croker (c.1849 – 1920)

Lady Gregory (1852 – 1932)

Katharine Tynan (1859 – 1931)

Clotilde Graves (1863 – 1932)

Ethna Carbery (1866 – 1902)

Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866 – 1918)

Beatrice Grimshaw (1870 – 1953)

Of course, as is always the case with these things, not everyone will agree with our choices. Two obvious omissions are Dorothy Macardle and Elizabeth Bowen. Given that they both appeared on our first poster, “Irish Writers of the Fantastic”, and are both served well in print, we decided not to include them again here. Instead we focused on lesser known contributors to fantastical literature. But the question stands: who would you include? And, more importantly, why would you include them?

As always, we hope this poster, “Strange Stories by Irish Women”, will lead you to discover new books and authors. If you have a further interest in Ireland’s contributions to fantastical literature, you also might want to check out our twice-yearly journal The Green Book, which features commentaries, articles, and reviews on Irish gothic, supernatural, and fantastic literature.

Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers

Order a copy of Bending to Earth.

Irish women have long produced literature of the gothic, uncanny, and supernatural. Bending to Earth draws together twelve such tales. While none of the authors herein were considered primarily writers of fantastical fiction during their lifetimes, they each wandered at some point in their careers into more speculative realms — some only briefly, others for lengthier stays.

Names such as Charlotte Riddell and Rosa Mulholland will already be familiar to aficionados of the eerie, while Katharine Tynan and Clotilde Graves are sure to gain new admirers. From a ghost story in the Swiss Alps to a premonition of death in the West of Ireland to strange rites in a South Pacific jungle, Bending to Earth showcases a diverse range of imaginative writing which spans the better part of a century.

Strange Stories by Irish Women
from Swan River Press