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Gaston De Latour is the first volume in the ten-volume Collected
Works of Walter Pater. Among Victorian writers, Pater (1839-1894)
challenged academic and religious orthodoxies, defended 'the love
of art for its own sake', developed a new genre of prose fiction
(the 'imaginary portrait'), set new standards for intermedial and
cross-disciplinary criticism, and made 'style' the watchword for
creativity and life. Everywhere creating themes and resonances that
span his narrative, the author's voice in Gaston de Latour is
intensely personal; and the reader's experience is intimate, almost
invasive. Although unfinished and first posthumously published in
1896, the novel was hailed by Richard Le Gallienne 'as sensitively
beautiful as in his most perfect work, as rich in delicate colour
and music, and as remarkable for exquisite detail.' This edition
includes six additional suppressed chapters by Pater of varying
degrees of completeness as a continuation of his interrupted
originally-serialized text. This revised text (now a third longer
than the posthumously published edition) appears here accompanied
by a scholarly Introduction, Explanatory Annotation, and Apparatus
Criticus. As it now stands, Pater's never-to-be-completed Gaston de
Latour seems very much to belong to artistic modernism, like a
'conceptual' work of art-an idea not formally actualized but open
to ranges of realization in the process of creation.
"The great English prose work has been written and perfectly
written and you and I would do well to lay down our pens. . . . I
believe that the worst page of prose Pater wrote is better than the
best that anybody else ever wrote." - George Moore
Set in the second century A.D. against the backdrop of a Roman
Empire on the verge of decline, "Marius the Epicurean" is the story
of the philosophical and spiritual development of Marius, a young
Italian serving as amanuensis to the great emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Marius explores the various systems of philosophy in search of an
elusive vision of love, moving from Epicureanism to Cyrenaicism and
finally Stoicism before finally finding what he had sought in the
terrible beauty of Christian martyrdom.
"Marius the Epicurean" is the rare novel that is as significant
for its style as for its plot. Told in Pater's uniquely exquisite
and poetic prose, "Marius" became a profound influence on writers
of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements of the late Victorian era,
including Pater's former student, Oscar Wilde. It is also an
important forerunner of the psychological novels of Joyce, Woolf,
James, and Conrad, all of whom absorbed into their fictional
techniques Pater's emphasis on the rendering of impressions and his
presentation of character and point of view.
This new edition, the first in over two decades, is based on the
first edition of 1885 and features a new introduction and notes by
Pater specialist Gerald Monsman. Also included is a generous
selection of supplementary materials, such as contemporary reviews
and excerpts from Pater's manuscripts, some of which are published
here for the first time.
" A] book of strange adventures, of ghostly, nightmare visions; you
will want to read it at a sitting, but do not begin it at bedtime
unless your nerves are in a thoroughly healthy condition" - "The
Reader"
" Q]uite a remarkable book . . . Mr. Henham has the exceptional
gift of lending an atmosphere of reality to the fantastic. . . .
Some people will find the book enthralling: others may pronounce it
quite mad, but everyone must recognise its undeniable cleverness."
- "The Outlook"
"This strange story . . . has a tropical luxuriance of imagination
quite unusual in works by English writers . . . an atmosphere of
eeriness and mystery strongly reminiscent of Poe. The plot is
clever, the characters well-drawn; but it is in his power to create
an atmosphere of vagueness and suggestion that Mr. Henham may be
said to possess something very like genius." - "The Publisher"
In the remote hamlet of Thorlund stands the manor house known as
the Strath, an eerie place that exercises a mysterious hold over
anyone who enters it. The site of tragedy in 1742 when its owner,
Sir John Hooper, turned highwayman and met his death on the
gallows, the Strath has remained vacant for over a century, a pair
of hideous masks its only occupants. When the novel opens, the
Strath's new owner has just arrived from America to take possession
of the house, but he is soon found horribly murdered. Now the next
heir, young Charles Conway, has come to the Strath, and the house
begins to work its baneful influence on him and on the local
residents, causing them to behave in bizarre and violent ways. What
is the connection between the sinister power of the Strath and the
ghastly masks that adorn the wall? And once Conway and the others
are drawn within the evil place, can any of them possibly survive?
"One of England's lost novelists, a writer of startling abilities"
("Times Literary Supplement"), Ernest G. Henham, who also published
under the pseudonym "John Trevena," was the author of bizarre
Gothic fantasies such as "Tenebrae" (1898) and "The Feast of
Bacchus" (1907), as well as a number of unusual and highly
imaginative works set in Dartmoor. This first-ever republication of
Henham's novel includes a new introduction by Gerald Monsman.
"It would be difficult to find a novel more unusual or more
original. That it is beautifully written, full of poetic passages,
and contains many fascinating descriptions ...] will be regarded as
a matter of course by those who have read any of his] preceding
books, and therefore know that John Trevena is unquestionably one
of the most notable of living writers." - "New York Times," Jan.
10, 1915
"The construction of the book is very artistic and is difficult to
accomplish, but apart from its structural merits 'Sleeping Waters'
has high value. ...] Our admiration for this author has been
expressed over and over again. There is grasp and reach and power
in his] books ...] and they are books that place their author among
the foremost of the English novelists." - "Los Angeles Times," Feb.
21, 1915
"The story is magnificently told. . . . The vividness and
monstrosity of the characters remind one of the Brontes." -
"Chicago Tribune," Jan. 13, 1915
""Sleeping Waters" is a unique novel, and it discloses still
further and more emphatically the genius of John Trevena." -
"Boston Transcript," Jan. 13, 1915
Father John Anger is worn down from a hard life as a Catholic
priest ministering to the poor of London's slums. He travels to a
remote village in Dartmoor seeking to recover his health by means
of the salubrious air and medicinal waters, and he anticipates a
long and tedious convalescence in the sleepy place. But Anger soon
finds that despite the village's rustic appearance, it holds as
much drama and tragedy as even London. Curgenven, a humpbacked
dwarf and scheming attorney, has a diabolical plot to steal the
ignorant villagers' land and resell it at a huge profit. Anger
resolves to thwart the lawyer's plan, but he is not prepared for
the dangerous secrets he will uncover, or the violent climax that
his interference will provoke. . . .
Ernest G. Henham (1870-1946) published melodramatic popular novels
as a young man before moving to Dartmoor for his health and
reinventing himself as "John Trevena." Trevena was regarded as one
of the finest novelists of his time, but today he has fallen into
total neglect, and his books are all but unobtainable. This 100th
anniversary edition of "Sleeping Waters" (1913) includes a new
introduction by Prof. Gerald Monsman, who argues for
reconsideration of Trevena as an important Edwardian writer and
regional novelist as significant as Thomas Hardy.
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Tenebrae (Paperback)
Ernest George Henham; Edited by Gerald Monsman
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R610
Discovery Miles 6 100
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The narrator of "Tenebrae" inhabits a decaying, desolate mansion in
the remote and wild countryside with his younger brother and their
mad old uncle, driven insane by abuse of opium and alcohol. This
nameless narrator is a morbid young man who passes most of his time
in a room painted all black, poring over arcane manuscripts dealing
with the mysteries of death, while sipping garishly coloured
liquors brewed by his uncle or cups of coffee flavoured with
arsenic.
When he falls in love with a neighbour, he looks forward to
marrying her and trading his life of despondency for one of joy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, she finds him rather unpleasant
company and instead falls in love with his brother. Driven to
murderous jealousy, he resolves upon a brutal crime. But after the
consummation of his terrible act, he finds himself haunted by a
huge, monstrous spider. Is it a delusion brought on by incipient
madness? the reincarnated soul of his murdered victim, returned for
vengeance? or does it foretell a fate even more horrifying than can
be possibly imagined?
Published in 1898, at the end of a decade in which English writers
explored the literary possibilities of the Gothic with such
characters as Dorian Gray, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, and The
Beetle, Ernest G. Henham's weird horror novel "Tenebrae" is
reminiscent of the works of Poe. Perhaps unequalled in its extreme
darkness and gloom, and yet at times grimly, though possibly
unintentionally, hilarious, "Tenebrae" remains one of the strangest
productions of this fertile literary period. This newly typeset
edition includes the unabridged text of the first edition, as well
as an introduction and notes by Gerald Monsman, the foremost
scholar of Henham (1870-1946), who later published under the name
John Trevena. Also featured is a reproduction of the cover of the
incredibly scarce first edition.
Picking up where "The King's Assegai" (1894) left off, "The
White Shield" (1895) continues the story of Untuswa, the young Zulu
warrior, now one of the chief indunas to King Umzilikazi.
The Ndebele people, now an established and prosperous nation,
seek to expand their power by conquering neighbouring peoples, but
Umzilikazi and Untuswa face a number of dangers. Within the tribe,
a conspiracy is brewing to overthrow them, and meanwhile, the young
Ndebele nation risks destruction from external forces, such as
white Boer settlers and the ferocious Zulu army. With the help of
the king's fabled white shield and two "sorcerers"-a white
missionary priest and a beautiful young Zulu woman-Untuswa will
face the threats looming against his people and attempt once again
to win victory and honour.
The second of Mitford's tetralogy of novels peopled entirely by
Zulu characters, "The White Shield" is a thrilling tale of war,
love, and magic that remains as exciting today as when first
published. This edition includes a new introduction by the foremost
Mitford scholar, Gerald Monsman, as well as notes and contextual
appendices.
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