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Lots of people know that Walter de la Mare was a fantastic poet,
but his weird fiction is much less well known. It shouldn't be --
he was a marvelous fantasist, and The Return is a heck of a book.
Arthur Lawford, recovering from a long bout with influenza, takes a
fateful walk in an old cemetery one afternoon, returning a changed
man who neither his wife, nor his friends, nor himself --
recognizes. . . . (Jacketless library hardcover.)
If you know Walter De La Mare's work, you probably know him as
an important literary novelist and poet in the early twentieth
century. But he also tried his hand at children's fiction, and "The
Three Mulla-mulgars" is pretty special. It's the sort of book you
want to take home and read to your kids yourself.
But it's De La Mare. You "know" it's got to have a bit of verse,
don't you?
"Long -- long is Time, though books be brief:
Adventures strange -- ay, past belief --
Await the Reader's drowsy eye;
But, wearied out, he'd lay them by.
"But, if so be he'd some day hear
All that befell these brothers dear
In Tishnar's lovely Valleys -- well,
Poor pen, thou must that story tell!
"But farewell, now, you Mulgars three!
Farewell, your faithful company!
Farewell, the heart that loved unbidden --
Nod's dark-eyed, beauteous Water-midden!"
This selection of Walter de la Mare's finest dark poems -- many
with fantasy and supernatural themes -- draws from such sources as
The Saturday Review, The Thrush, The Pall Mall Magazine, The Odd
Volume, The Lady's Realm, The English Review, The Westminster
Gazette, The Commonwealth, and The Nation. Included are "The Dark
Chateau," "The Witch," "The Ghost," and more.
The Return by Walter de la Mare is an occult tale of possession. It
is an interesting gothic psychological thriller, nebulous and dark,
in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. Gripping and poignant tale of
psychic possession concerns Arthur Lawford, who appears to have
been possessed by the spirit of a long-dead French 18th-century
pirate. One of de la Mare's finest occult stories, the novel also
deals with domestic trauma, unrequited love and philosophical
reflection. Insidiously horrific, unrelentingly disturbing...
Walter de la Mare -- famous as a fantasist and as a poet -- was a
lot of things. Brilliant, well spoken, and just plain cool. But you
know? In the end, his own poems speak better of this collection of
poetry than we ever could. And so we let him have his say --
The Truants
Ere my heart beats too coldly and faintly
To remember sad things, yet be gay, Magic hath stolen away.
The primroses scattered by April,
The stars of the wide Milky Way,
Cannot outnumber the hosts of the children
Magic hath stolen away.
The buttercup green of the meadows,
The snow of the blossoming may,
Lovelier are not than the legions of children
Magic hath stolen away.
The waves tossing surf in the moonbeam,
The albatross lone on the spray,
Alone know the tears wept in vain for the children
Magic hath stolen away.
In vain: for at hush of the evening,
When the stars twinkle into the grey,
Seems to echo the faraway calling of children
Magic hath stolen away.
'This is a book about childhood, but it is not a mere literary
essay, it is a work of the widest learning, exploring the whole
field of the subject ... a book rich in ideas, rich in information,
rich in wisdom ...indeed, a kind of Anatomy of Childhood.' The
Listener 'An enchanting book, and one that is certain of deepening
affection in every house into which it finds its way.' Observer
'Only Walter de la Mare could have devised these ceremonies and
been the master of them. In this conjuration of childhood he has
amassed its evidence as displayed in many autobiographies, and has
set against this the letters, diaries, stories and verses of these
children ... His company ranges from mill hands and chimney sweeps
to two queens of England; it embraces the whole gamut of the
English poets; mathematicians and philosophers, though not so
plentiful, are discovered to have been children once.' New
Statesman
Desert Islands opens with a captivating essay on the romance of
islands and castaways in literature and life, and the associations
that have arisen in the imagination of readers in every generation.
The essay leads on to over 200 pages of what de la Mare himself
calls 'a rambling commentary', in the form of an anthology or
commonplace book on every conceivable aspect of this teeming
subject. There are notes, reflections and quotations from a
lifetime's reading on wrecks, maroons, pirates, utopias, goats,
hallucinations, exotic foods, misers, punishments, solitude ,
Darwin, parrots, idols, saints, hermits, maps, spices, drugs . . .
and of course Daniel Defoe. Desert Islands is the perfect bedside
or holiday book. It also playfully boasts a subtitle of rococo
inventiveness and one of the longest you will ever read! 'A vast
treasure chest, a bewildering collection . . . to dazzle and
fascinate everyone who lifts the lid.' Geoffrey Grigson
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