Skip to main content

Blog Archives

Older posts
Newer posts

The Seer of Trieste

“The old Austro-Hungarian imperial seaport of Trieste has been home to several literary figures: Anglo-Irish novelist Charles Lever, Victorian explorer, translator and erotologist Sir Richard Burton, James Joyce, who started his masterpiece Ulysses there, the fine bookseller-poet Umberto Saba, and Italo Svevo, the chain-smoking man of business who caught its curious atmosphere so well in his novels. A place apart, at first mercantile and prosperous, but with a history associated with loss, melancholy and the liminal, it also has a strange undercurrent of the shabby-bohemian and semi-magical. An acquaintance with a genteel seer and almanac-maker in the city led me to an unexpected revelation about the prevailing spirit of the place and its influence upon those who wrote there. In quest of this, I encountered scrying youths, a masked ball, a reclusive artist perfecting a new form, and at last a monstrous brooding presence. Here is the full text of a lecture to the Aeolian Club of Lincoln which may merit a place amongst the more astonishing of the accounts it has heard.” – Mark Valentine

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #6

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A

The Nanri Papers

“Dear Mr. Otani, I am contacting you on behalf of Mr. Masanobu Nanri of Onimaru, Saga City. Mr. Nanri recently showed me some papers and personal effects belonging to his parents (both deceased). These papers have to do with events he describes as ‘likely paranormal in nature’ that have occurred over the years at Akamatsu Primary School, also in Saga City. For your reference, I have included transcripts of the original documents he showed me as well as an explanation of the circumstances under which he showed them to me. Mr. Nanri is concerned, as you will see from the following text, that there is the chance of physical danger not only to the students, teachers and staff of the school, but also to the general public. You will see from the printout of a website Mr. Nanri recently viewed that the school has been listed as a ‘paranormal hot spot’ on the Internet. He is therefore interested in the site being investigated by reputable professionals and experts in the field so that any danger may be averted.” – Sincerely, Edward Crandall

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #5

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A

Brutal Spirits

“My friend and sometime mentor, Charles Edward Urban, died in March 2007. He was seventy years old. Unfortunately, Charles took his own life before I had the chance to ever meet him in the flesh, and our long-distance relationship remained sadly unresolved. I had been fortunate enough to conduct an informal correspondence with him (a loose friendship that took the form of letters and emails) in the few years before his untimely death, which was begun when I sent him a fan letter because a story of his (“The Red Yawn”) affected me profoundly enough to cause me to re-examine my entire life. Charles named me in his will as sole executor of his estate. Going through his belongings, ostensibly in search of unpublished material for a proposed posthumous collection of his short fiction , I came across the following papers in the locked bottom drawer of a battered Victorian bureau. Whether they constitute notes for an unfinished tale, the ramblings of a suicidal and deeply unsettled mind, or accounts of genuine strange occurrences in the north east of England, I will leave you to decide.” – Gary McMahon (editor)

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #4

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A

The Red House at Münstereifel

“Early in 2007, whilst researching an article about Steinfeld Abbey, I came across the collection of documents (originally in German) which comprise this booklet, in a forgotten folder bearing the name of Löher, a name closely connected with that infamous period in European history when witch-hunting was at its height. For reasons which will soon become clear upon perusal of the documents, I have chosen to publish them outside Germany. It is imperative that the facts relating to the history of the Red House in Münstereifel—in so far as they can be established—are put before those persons best equipped to take the appropriate action. The author of the original documents perished in a horrific incident which appears not unconnected with their compilation. Whether his fears and suspicions were justified is for you, the reader, to judge.” – H. Grant (editor)

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #3

Cover art by William Bond

ISBN: N/A

Blind Man’s Box

“On the thirteenth of July this year, Dr. George Vilier, died suddenly at the age of fifty five. He was lecturer in Theatre Studies at Bath University, and a colleague and friend of mine, so I suppose it should have been no surprise to discover that he had made me his literary executor. Among his papers I found the almost complete MS of his long-awaited work, The Gothic Experience in Victorian Drama, which I hope will soon see publication. I also found a folder which contained the following documents and notes. I am sure that Vilier was intending to use them to form a single connected narrative, and I debated whether I should do the same. In the end I decided that I would serve his memory better if I arranged these papers in a moderately coherent order, secured the relevant copyright permissions and published them as they stood. I have added a short note at the end, but readers must decide for themselves whether what follows provides any clue to the mystery of his sudden and tragic death.” – Reggie Oliver (editor)

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #2

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A

On the Apparitions at Gray’s Court

“This intriguing pamphlet, handsomely produced by Swan River Press, is the first in a promised series of fake histories of real buildings. Peter Bell’s fascinating On the Apparitions at Gray’s Court leaves you eager for more. Taking the form of a reprinted academic paper, complete with footnotes, bibliographic references and the kind of entertainingly pernickety detail beloved of the local history enthusiast, we’re very much in M. R. James territory, physically as well as stylistically—a medieval building in the cathedral precinct at York, which has played host at different times to clergy, academics and something altogether less reassuring.

“By the end I was googling away to try and sort the truth from the fiction. It’s a great idea and Dr. Bell pulls it off with ease and elegance. If anyone out there has a second hand copy of the author’s Poltergeist over the Wolds: A Study of Paranormal Phenomena in the East Riding of Yorkshire, I’d be very interested in putting in an offer.” – Robert Lloyd Parry, All Hallows

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

Haunted Histories Series #1

Cover art by Meggan Kehrli

ISBN: N/A

The Complete Ghost Stories of Chapelizod

“One does well not to under-appreciate the ever-alive allure of reminiscences begotten in childhood . . . Chapelizod, like the Irish capital of which it was in effect a suburb, in the early 1800s glumly epitomised the glamour and the grandeur that was gone: ‘Dead walls; dead trees overhanging them; dead lights instead of windows in the houses; the men grave, the women lifeless, the little spirits squeaking and gibbering in the muddy streets!’ Thus must it have appeared to the sensitive mind of the child who grew up to be the author of Uncle Silas, Wylder’s Hand, and The House by the Church-yard—this last the writer’s towering salute to the village and its picturesque environs which had sparked his eager imagination before it could shape itself in prose. Although the Le Fanu family moved to the mid-west of Ireland in 1826, with Reverend Le Fanu’s appointment as Dean of Emly and Rector of Abington, and much of his elder son’s early macabre tales are set in this region and elsewhere in the Irish countryside, the memory of Chapelizod lay dormant in the writer’s mind for twenty-five years before being unleashed in the stories which feature in this book.” -from the Introduction by Albert Power

This edition commemorates the 160th anniversary of “Ghost Stories of Chapelizod” (1851) and the 150th anniversary of The House by the Church-yard (1861-1863), and is the first time “Some Gossip about Chapelizod” (1851) has been re-printed.

  • More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The Green Book

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

J. S. Le Fanu Series #3

Cover design by Brian J. Showers
Introduction by Albert Power

ISBN: N/A

The Ballads and Poems of J. Sheridan Le Fanu

“When in the year 1880 I wrote a memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, as a Preface to his “Purcell Papers”, I was not aware that, besides being the author of the Irish poems contained in that collection of Irish stories and of the celebrated “Shamus O’Brien”, Le Fanu had anonymously contributed half-a-dozen other poems to the Dublin University Magazine between the years 1863 and 1866; two of which . . . exhibit Le Fanu’s genius in a new and unexpected light. They show him to have been capable of dramatic and lyrical creation on a distinctly higher plane than he had hitherto reached . . . The same magnetic attributes of superhuman mystery, grim or ghastly humour and diabolic horror which characterise the finest of his prose fictions meet us again.” – from the Introduction by A. P. Graves

This booklet reproduces much of the contents of The Poems of Le Fanu, which was first published in 1896. The original introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves is herein reproduced as are the appendices. New to this edition are extracts from Seventy Years of Irish Life in which the author’s brother, William Le Fanu, included extracts of juvenile poetry (“O’Donoghue” and “Valentine to Miss K”); and a selection of contemporary reviews.

  • More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Booklet edition limited to 200 copies.

J. S. Le Fanu Series #2

Cover design by Brian J. Showers
Introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves

ISBN: N/A

My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure

“My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” is reminiscent of the great terror tales of mounting alarm such as Wilkie Collins’s “A Terribly Strange Bed”; the hotel scene, to a lesser extent, in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”; James Whale’s The Old Dark House; and the more recent film The Last Great Wilderness (2002) directed by David Mackenzie. In fact, with their often arch and sardonic senses of humour, the latter two examples are most appropriate comparisons. Comfort and safety are fleeting in stories like these. Familiar and generally hospitable surroundings quickly take turns into strange worlds of indefinable menace. Terror mounts. A candle going out may be discomforting, but an accident befalling your only light source is downright sinister. Like Aunt Margaret, the reader is cursed with an active mind courtesy of the author’s vivid prose rich in regional flavour and Gothic detail. It’s only a matter of time—we can just feel it in our bones!—before the other shoe drops.

“My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” first appeared in the March 1864 issue of the Dublin University Magazine, which was then under the editorship of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The DUM was a regular venue for Le Fanu’s work. The February issue contained the final instalments of his novel Wylder’s Hand, while the April issue saw the publication of “Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling”—”My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” appeared in the interceding issue. Believed by M. R. James and S. M. Ellis to be the work of Le Fanu, “My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure” shares many motifs, themes, and effects found in the Irish author’s work. This new edition will feature commentary on the story and its authorship by two leading Le Fanu scholars, Jim Rockhill (introduction and annotations) and Gary W. Crawford (afterword).

  • More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in issues of The Green Book

This limited edition booklet is sold out.
Please check with our Booksellers for remaining copies.

J. S. Le Fanu Series #1

Cover art by Allison Elrod
Introduction by Jim Rockhill
Afterword: Gary William Crawford

ISBN: N/A

J. S. Le Fanu: A Concise Bibliography

“As my book J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1995) has shown, cataloguing Le Fanu’s work is no easy task. There are many snares and chasms, omissions and errors to be found on the bibliographer’s journey. Most difficult is the fact that many of Le Fanu’s works were published anonymously in Victorian magazines. This has been further complicated by the fact that Le Fanu’s account books, notebooks and other papers were dispersed and lost after his death. There are undoubtedly many unsigned items produced by Le Fanu’s pen that will never be found.

“This concise edition of that bibliography was edited, re-organised and amended by Brian J. Showers, with assistance from Richard Dalby. A major difference is that the magazine appearances are listed chronologically to help give a sense of Le Fanu’s development as a writer. The listing of books is selective as to first editions and major appearances, as is the secondary material with annotations provided for landmark critical works.” – from the “Preliminary Word” by Gary W. Crawford

  • More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The Green Book

Booklet edition limited to 200 copies.

J. S. Le Fanu Series #0

Cover design by Brian J. Showers
Preliminary Word by Gary William Crawford

ISBN: N/A

Older posts
Newer posts