The Green Book 20

Editor’s Note #20

With this issue, we offer another ten profiles of Irish writers of gothic, supernatural, and fantastic fiction. The two most notable writers this issue—and therefore lengthiest entries—are, of course, Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906) and Bram Stoker (1847-1912). Along with names like Charles Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Lord Dunsany, Riddell and Stoker might be considered pillars of Irish fiction. It might even be said that Dracula (1897), for better or for worse, is a key text of world literature and beyond. After all, who would not recognise the Lugosi-inflected visage of Stoker’s infamous Count?

John Edgar Browning has shown in A Critical Feast (2012) that Dracula was a hit from the start, when it first landed on booksellers’ shelves in late May of 1897. But Stoker’s magnum opus really took on a life of its own when it transitioned to other media. Dracula’s early rise in popular culture is most thoroughly traced in David J. Skal’s Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (1990).

One key player in this tangled trajectory was Hamilton Deane (1879-1958), the playwright who first properly dramatised Dracula for the stage in 1924. As it turns out, like Stoker, Deane was also an Irishman, though hailing from New Ross in Co. Wexford (whereas Stoker was a northside Dub). But it was Deane’s popular adaptation, modified by John L. Balderston for the New York stage, that caught the eye of Carl Laemmle, Jr. at Universal Studios; Tod Browning’s film adaptation in 1931 credited both dramatists. Alongside profiles of Stoker and Deane, you will also find F. Frankfort Moore, Stoker’s brother-in-law and author of the Egyptological lost world novel, The Secret of the Court (1895). Alas, Moore’s erstwhile bestsellers these days rarely receive much popular or scholarly attention.

Like Stoker, Charlotte Riddell is likely no stranger to readers of The Green Book. During her lifetime, Riddell was known as “the novelist of the City” and admired for her bestselling novels of London life. However, and despite the occasional attempt otherwise, her popular reputation today rests primarily on her supernatural writings: some fifteen odd stories and four novellas.

In the evolution of the classic ghost story, Riddell sits somewhere between Le Fanu and M. R. James. Unlike Le Fanu’s often alienated (and alienating) narratives, Riddell’s writing has to it a certain warmth: her well-drawn scenarios, perhaps not surprisingly, often focus on homes with bad reputations, and the need for both financial and domestic stability. With her seminal collection Weird Stories, published in 1882, it would still be another two decades before Dr. James’s perfectly realised pleasing terrors were issued.

Also among these pages you will find a number of other authors, some expected, others less so: the mystical poet Ella Young, the decadent artist Althea Gyles, and the playwright Dion Boucicault, whose curious drama The Vampire (1852) is an entry in the evolution of literary vampires rarely mentioned in gothic corners.

Finally, I should probably take this opportunity to note that this is our twentieth issue—that’s ten years of publishing—and say something like “I never thought we’d get this far”. The truth is, I never had any expectations for this journal at all, save for that it would make for a suitable instrument to explore the lesser known corners of Irish literature. I think it has, and I hope you feel the same. So, for what it’s worth, thank you to everyone who has supported The Green Book these past ten years. I’m excited to see where we go next!

Brian J. Showers
Rathmines, Dublin
28 August 2022

The Green Book 20 (Samhain 2022) edited by Brian J. Showers. Cover art by Frank O’Meara; cover design by Meggan Kehrli; editor’s note by Brian J. Showers; edited by Brian J. Showers; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; typeset by Steve J. Shaw; published by Swan River Press.

Paperback: Published on 29 September 2022; limited to 250 copies; 108 pages; digitally printed on 80 gsm paper; ISSN: 2009-6089.

About The Green Book

Aimed at a general readership and published twice-yearly, The Green Book is Swan River Press’s house journal that features commentaries, articles, and reviews on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic literature.

Certainly favourites such as Bram Stoker and John Connolly will come to mind, but hopefully The Green Book also will serve as a pathway to Ireland’s other notable fantasists: like Fitz-James O’Brien, Charlotte Riddell, Lafcadio Hearn, William Allingham, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Cheiro, Harry Clarke, Dorothy Macardle, Lord Dunsany, Elizabeth Bowen, C. S. Lewis, Mervyn Wall, Conor McPherson . . . and this list is by no means exhaustive.

It should be noted that the word “Irish” in the journal’s title should be understood as inclusive rather than exclusive. The Green Book will also feature essays on Irish themes—even if by non-Irish authors. We hope that you will find something of interest here, for there is much to explore.

The Green Book is open for submissions.

Praise for The Green Book

“A welcome addition to the realm of accessible nonfiction about supernatural horror.” – Ellen Datlow

“Serious aficionados of the weird should also consider subscribing to The Green Book.” – Michael Dirda

“An exceptionally well-produced periodical.” – S. T. Joshi

“[A] wonderful exploration of a weird little corner of literature, and a great example of how careful editing can make even the most obscure subject fascinating and entertaining beyond all expectations.” – The Agony Column

“Eminently readable . . . [an] engaging little journal that treads the path between accessibility and academic depth with real panache.” – Black Static

“The overall feel here is not of fusty excavation in a small corner of the literary world, but of exploration on a broad front that continues to unearth intriguing finds.” – Supernatural Tales