OT - Treasures, or possibly interesting items in our collections

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OT - Treasures, or possibly interesting items in our collections

1housefulofpaper
Mai 8, 2020, 3:38 pm



- some paperbacks.


- a closer look at - amazing? - cover for The Undying Monster.


- a book I found in my local Oxfam charity shop.


- is it inscribed by the author? Rather than make a feature of this the shop had hidden it under a post-it.

2alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 9, 2020, 4:13 pm

Got quiet quite excited for a moment, there, by A Man Called Poe. Thought it was a biography I hadn't heard about ...

Damn! Faced with a picture of some books and half-hour's gone before I know it, hunting online (with my wallet twitching in fear every step of the way ...)

3housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 9, 2020, 12:28 pm

>2 alaudacorax:
Sorry about that, no it's an anthology. It includes Robert Bloch's story "The Man Who Collected Poe", which was adapted for one of Amicus' portmanteau horror films.

That was a not-quite random selection. I chose older paperbacks, and they were all from a box of books I have actually read. Most of the top row reprint stories from Weird Tales, or at least include Weird Tales authors. There's a tendency (in the press, anyway) to perennially treat H P Lovecraft as an obscure author only just being (re)discovered...when? When he was published as a Penguin Classic? When Re-Animator was a successful film? When Mario Bava was reading him, presumably in Italian translation, in the 1950s? Anyway...

The three Doctor Who novelisations at bottom left are, a 1967 reprint of one of the three 1960s novelisations, the reprint from Target books in the "canonical" style (the cover illustration by Chris Achilleos in the style of comic artist Frank Bellamy, who was then producing postgage stamp-sized illustrations for every episode listing in the Radio Times). And the recent novelisation of Peter Capaldi's last story in the same style.

Something a bit different next. Pegana Press have produced letterpress editions of selected Clark Ashton Smith stories:

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-


4LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2020, 12:08 pm

GREAT stuff, keep it coming!

I had about a dozen of those new DW's with the embossed/foil titles but gave them to a colleague's kid.

Pegana Press looks marvellous, are those deckle edges on the bottom?

5housefulofpaper
Mai 9, 2020, 12:49 pm

>4 LolaWalser:

Glad you're enjoying them!

Yes, it's a deckle edge on the pamphlet-style books.Here's a closer look:


6LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2020, 1:07 pm

Very nice, I really like the type too.

Are you linking those from LT? I can't get anywhere near your resolution 😢

7LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2020, 1:11 pm

Sigh! Okay, for my admittedly very low value of "good", which is better, Stills





or Video:

Pulp Chinoiserie?

8housefulofpaper
Mai 9, 2020, 6:00 pm

>7 LolaWalser:
I've got some rather restrained Fu Manchu onmibus paperbacks published about 20 years ago. I would have appreciated some more pulpy editions. I haven't read them all, I think I might find reading about Sax Rohmer more entertaining than reading his work - there are six of us on Librarything with copies of The Lord of Strange Deaths (I think I feel the same about Dennis Wheatley thanks to The Devil is a Gentleman).

I've never read a Charlie Chan or a Mr Moto novel. I don't think I've even seen one. The Mr Moto of the books is very different from Peter Lorre's film version, I see from Wikipedia.

And thank you for the second video tour! I've met two of the authors in that stack of Doctor Who novels. The late Ian Marter at a convention in the late '80s and Paul Cornell around the same time, but again last year at Thought Bubble (my first comic convention in thirty years, and my first trip to Yorkshire).

9housefulofpaper
Mai 9, 2020, 6:02 pm

>6 LolaWalser:
Yes, I'm uploading the pictures to my junk drawer. We had some very bright sunshine today - that must have helped with image clarity.

10LolaWalser
Modifié : Mai 9, 2020, 7:23 pm

>8 housefulofpaper:

Haven't read the Moto books; have seen all the movies (of course--Peter Lorre!) Those covers are pretty bad, especially that Little,Brown one...

I read the first five Fu Manchus and yes, they are terrible in all kinds of ways and run together in a mush. But they are almost tolerable compared to Rohmer's "dream detective", Morris Klaw... I notice no one seems to be rushing to republish those at all. Rohmer seems almost affectionate toward the Chinese when you see how he wrote about Jews.

I just realised the Fu Manchus I've shown are those I haven't read yet--the read ones are in a box under my bed. Oh well. If I feel like digging them out tomorrow I'll do the whole set. For now, just to round off the selection shown above, the Chans and the unread Rohmers:

 


11LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2020, 2:50 pm

All the Fu Manchus I have (four of those I owe to the kindness of a couple of LT friends in Albany, NY):

12LolaWalser
Mai 10, 2020, 2:57 pm

My bunch of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee books, plus The Strange cases of Magistrate Pao by Leon Comber.



The books were illustrated by van Gulik himself:

13alaudacorax
Mai 11, 2020, 4:20 am

I hadn't realised that Charlie Chan was Earl Derr Biggers. We recently talked about his Seven Keys to Baldpate as the basis (tenuously) for House of the Long Shadows. I quite enjoyed that book, might try a Charlie Chan ...

14mnleona
Mai 11, 2020, 2:24 pm

I have Poe books but have never seen the Charlie Chan or others. I get a lot of my (or did) books at thrift stores. I also watch the Peter Lorre movies and Charlie Chan ones.

15LolaWalser
Mai 11, 2020, 4:10 pm

I'd recommend van Gulik, especially to begin with the first novels. Haven't tried reading the Chans yet and the movie versions with Warner Oland haven't grabbed me, at least the one or two I tried.

Second-hand bookshops and, most important, several huge university & library book sale hauls were the main source of my mass market paperback litter... achur.

16housefulofpaper
Mai 11, 2020, 5:37 pm

There was a big spike in republishing classic detective novels around 1989-90 and that's where a lot of mine originate. I remember the van Guliks on the bookshelves but never bought one. The first books are actually translations of that cases of a real historical character, I understand.

17LolaWalser
Mai 11, 2020, 5:51 pm

The "Celebrated cases..." is I think based on archives. Van Gulik was an ambassador and amateur sinologist with a special passion for all things erotic--he even wrote a book about Chinese sexuality and customs.

I enjoyed them a lot (still have a couple to finish...)

18benbrainard8
Mai 11, 2020, 10:32 pm

Are there any large anthologies/book sets of Weird Tales?

19alaudacorax
Mai 12, 2020, 6:46 am

>18 benbrainard8:

I've probably written at length of my delight with Weird Tales: A Facsimile of the World's Most Famous Fantasy Magazine. It may not be exactly what you are wanting though: my delight was as much with the physical layout and appearance of the book as with the content, and somebody will probably cite anthologies containing many more stories.

20alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 12, 2020, 6:51 am

>18 benbrainard8:

There's a thread on this very subject--knew I seen one: https://www.librarything.com/topic/142018

21LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 1:26 pm

22LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 1:28 pm

One of these days I'll come across something with Christopher Lee on the cover, I just know it.

23LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:16 pm

24LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:17 pm

25LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:19 pm

26LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:27 pm

Oh look, "foreword by Christopher Lee"--getting close... Six anthologies by that dodgy character, Peter Haining... one by the ubiquitous Groff Conklin, and a Nosferatu novelization by Paul Monette. Monette's Becoming a man is one of classic gay memoirs.

27LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:34 pm

All Lovecraft except the solo item on the right.

28LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2020, 3:38 pm

Last pic for now...

29housefulofpaper
Mai 12, 2020, 5:18 pm


>18 benbrainard8:



What I've found is that there are some collections based around Weird Tales (although you should bear in mind that the original magazine ran from the 1922 to 1954. There have been relaunches, in various formats, several times since then. The two hardcover collection I have differ in that one of them only draws its stories from that first run, but the other with its "seven decades of terror" subtitle takes the story up to date (when the book was published). I think both of these are still available on the second-hand market. There is at least one more collection that is either current or published more recently. I was tempted, but the postage from the US doubled the price and I didn't bite (this time!).

There are other collections, especially those based around Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, that reprint stories by Lovecraft and members his circle, that were originally published in Weird Tales. Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos is an example.

The one-author collections in the picture all include stories that appeared in Weird Tales.

Arkham House was set up soon after Lovecraft's death by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to keep his stories in print (the Lovecraft book in the picture is the most recent edition of one of their volumes of his work). The soon expanded to publish other authors, many of them Weird Tales authors.

It seems that many single or multi-author paperback collections originate from Arkham House editions.

And there are story collections - especially it seems from the 60s and the 70s, that draw heavily from Weird Tales but you would only know if the information is given in the book's copyright page.

The Wikipedia entry for Weird Tales includes a section on Weird Tale anthologies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Tales

30housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 12, 2020, 7:47 pm

- I now feel that my paperback collection is far too polite. Here's the Picador UK paperback of Nosferatu, front and back covers.



- The Robert Bloch is legitimately horrible, though.

The Small Assassin is an interesting collection. It's a UK-only collection that first appeared in the '60s and concentrates on Bradbury's horror and dark fantasy. Stories are drawn from The October Country and his first collection, Dark Carnival. The thing is, Dark Carnival wasn't kept in print - The October Country kind of replaced it - and some of these early stories weren't readily available in the US until the big career-spanning collections in the '80s.

The advert for hair tonic is the back cover of a wartime Penguin Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat.

- I think I like the democracy of all types of book being in the same format. I remember being impressed by the larger size books (like the Picador) but something's been lost.

These are all books I haven't read (at least not in these editions). They just happen to be easier to get at.

31LolaWalser
Modifié : Mai 12, 2020, 8:10 pm

>30 housefulofpaper:

Oooh I must procure that edition of Leiber--the Bester is... well, at least funny. I do like the purple-logo (sf) Penguins a lot. I have that same edition of Peacock. Fave author, I'd buy him in any edition. Never heard of Guy N. Smith or van Thal. I don't think I have more Bloch in paperback, but there is at least one more hardcover Arkham edition (signed!)...

I had several Kai Lungs in beautiful blue gold-embossed 1920s Jonathan Cape editions (same line as this Machen: Dog and duck, a London calendar et caetera) but I... just... couldn't... get into them. Try as I might, I found them so boring I'd forget by the bottom of the page what had happened on top. Well, the one I tried, I think Kai Lung's Wallet? Would love to hear if anyone else had a similar experience with Bramah...

Whaaaat, are we concerned about covers being polite? That will put a cramp in my show 'n' tell... and the "ulp" in "pulp". :)

32housefulofpaper
Mai 12, 2020, 8:50 pm

>31 LolaWalser:
Herbert van Thal was an anthologist; the Pan Horror Stories ran for decades. Tended to the gory. Guy N. Smith is a pipe-smoking, gun-loving, Commie-hating British author most famous for a series about murderous giant crabs. He's surely one of the sources (or targets) of Garth Marenghi (of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace).

I'll have to read some Bramah and report back. I do know his blind detective character, Max Carados, from radio and one TV adaptation, but I imagine those stories are very different.

I'm only worried my books are too polite. Those Lovecraft's you have - the heads, the cartoony whatever-they-are, are great...

33benbrainard8
Mai 12, 2020, 8:53 pm

Excellent, thank you, I'm going to add one of those anthology books to my list of books to purchase. I've also seen you can actually buy a CD/DVD that contains every single cover of WT. There are also those of the Metal Hurlant covers and its various artists.

34alaudacorax
Mai 13, 2020, 4:21 am

>30 housefulofpaper:

Marlon Brando as Nosferatu!?

>31 LolaWalser:

I do like Kai Lung ... but I have to be in the right mood. And I have to admit most of them don't stick in my mind very long.I discovered the stories when Peter or Harriet quoted one in, I think, Busman's Honeymoon. It's an ongoing hobby of mine trying to track down the multitude of acknowledged and unacknowledged literary quotes and references in Dorothy L. Sayers' 'Harriet Vane' books.

35housefulofpaper
Mai 13, 2020, 8:06 am

>34 alaudacorax:
I hadn't seen it before, but now you mention it...

36LolaWalser
Modifié : Mai 13, 2020, 3:24 pm

>32 housefulofpaper:, >34 alaudacorax:

Oh, right, there's Max Carados--I have at least one of those anthologised somewhere; they are fine. I think it's Bramah's make-believe "Chinese" voice in the Kai Lung that didn't work for me, so tediously purple, over-decorated and sententious. If you get a chance to compare it with van Gulik's more natural approach I think you'll see what I mean.

Well, I feel I should feel embarrassed for hogging the thread, but I'll post a few more pics today. Humble apologies. The thing is, I really need to get my mess under control and start putting books in storage, and this is one way of recording them before they get locked away for who knows how long. And as I start working again in June, I must hurry.

I have far less fantasy than sf and this is pretty much it in paperback (minus stand-alone novels, mostly classics, Tolkien, MacDonald etc.) I won't be showing more of my "skinnies"--this is just to show Ben I too sometimes care about keeping stuff properly protected. ;)

As a young fan of comics I didn't much care for Conan the human shawarma, but I loved his girlfriend Belit and, especially, Red Sonja. "She-Devil With A Sword"--surely any right-thinking little girl's answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?"...



37LolaWalser
Mai 13, 2020, 3:43 pm

The large paperback was a targeted purchase after I found the four anthologies in one of my bulk buys.

38LolaWalser
Mai 13, 2020, 3:53 pm

Fifteen anthologies edited by Groff Conklin--and there are more.



Damon Knight was another prolific editor (besides writing too)--the SFWA's memorial award to "Grand Masters" of science fiction bears his name.

39housefulofpaper
Mai 13, 2020, 5:39 pm




Dracula and Dracula-related stuff. A couple of extravagant purchases here, I have to confess.


40housefulofpaper
Mai 13, 2020, 8:13 pm

>21 LolaWalser:
How odd to see J. B. Priestley named on the cover of The Unhumans. I think of him as a mainstream, even Establishment-approved, author. Someone who appears on the English literature syllabus.
>23 LolaWalser:
I saw that same edition of Frank Belknap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos in the Oxfam shop but didn't buy. It looked as it has been jammed behind a hot water pipe for a couple of decades. Funny how these paperbacks make it across the Atlantic (I see your Pans and Mayflowers, etc.) bearing in mind copyright restrictions declare they are "not for sale in ---"! Montague Summers! Never read anything by him, but have read stories about him.
>26 LolaWalser:
I'd forgotten the Knight Books imprint. It was a line of children's books. I suppose, in the context of 1970s book covers, you can see they're pulling their punches, just a bit, on The Monster Makers.

41benbrainard8
Mai 13, 2020, 8:27 pm

I really like anything Dracula-related or vampire-related, so that hits the spot.

42benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 13, 2020, 8:32 pm

Out of curiosity, what are your favorite versions of Dracula on film? Any you particularly love, or dislike?

43benbrainard8
Mai 13, 2020, 8:30 pm

I thought the Coppola version, was fairly weak, despite the nice visuals---I remember seeing the Count Dracula (1977) with Louis Jourdan, Frank Finlay, Susan Penhaligon. That version made quite an impression on me. Esp. for something I'd viewed on T.V.

44housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 14, 2020, 10:39 am

>42 benbrainard8:
I suppose my favourite Dracula actor is Christopher Lee. There's a real sense of physical menace about him, but (when he deigns to deliver any lines - he's wordless or almost wordless in most of the Hammer sequels) a real intellect too. It's almost impossible to choose between him and Lugosi of course. I've become more impressed with Frank Langella's performance in the 1979 film after re-watching it recently.

There's a lot that I like in the Coppola but it follows the Jack Palance TV movie in importing the reincarnated love/Dracula as romantic hero element into the story. I gather this can be traced back to Dan Curtis' soap opera Dark Shadows and the popularity of Barnabas Collins - but it's there in Universal's The Mummy as well, and that is very much structured as a copy the Lugosi Dracula. I think it was valuable in locating the story in a real (although operatically heightened, visually) Eastern Europe rather than Universal's backlot or Hammer's Home Counties version of "Mitteleuropa". Oldman's "old man" (no pun intended) Dracula was as big a shock - and a corrective to the cloak and evening dress image (of my three favourites!) as Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu 14 or so years earlier had been. That performance had made a big impression on me...well the image in stills and film posters in 1977/78 made an impression, but I didn't see the film until years later. Thinking about it Lee made a big impression just through stills and occasional clips on television a very long time before I saw any of his Dracula films. Imagination put an aura around him...it's like the story Mask Gatiss tells, of as a child tuning into pro-celebrity golf just in the hop of catching sight of Christopher Lee playing a round.

The 1977 Count Dracula is the version most faithful to the book, yes I don't dislike Louis Jordan's performance but he doesn't quite get to the same level as the three "L"s, in my view.

The 2006 TV adaptation with Marc Warren was not successful but even there, because I've read books like Clive Leatherdale's Dracula: the novel and the legend I can see where the scriptwriter is playing with hints in the novel or Stoker's notes, or approaches abandoned in earlier drafts, as well as drawing on wider critical thought on e.g. contagion, colonialism, the treatment of women, and so on.

I think, before I offer an opinion on the 2020 Moffatt/Gatiss version, i need to watch it again.



45alaudacorax
Mai 14, 2020, 5:26 am

>36 LolaWalser: - ... so tediously purple, over-decorated and sententious.

That's it--I have to be in the right mood ... then it becomes like eating sweets or what have you--you know it's not good for you, but ...

46alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 15, 2020, 8:27 am

>37 LolaWalser:

I just got all in a tizzy over that Women of Wonder: The Classic Years cover:

A mobile phone? When was that cover image created? 40s? 50s? 60s? 70s? When did we have mobile phones like that? Was the artist foretelling the future?

Then I started to look up mobile phones and it dawned on me--we never had mobile phones like that; it's familiar to me because its it's a Star Trek communicator ...

47benbrainard8
Mai 14, 2020, 10:28 am

Thank you, this gives me a list of which to watch first.

I've a huge time-gap period, between 1979-1993, where I'd no T.V., hence no watching older movies. So I'm still doing a lot of catching up. I guess I should start with the Christopher Lee 1958 movie, then onto the Langella (1979) version. I remember seeing the movie posters but being too young to see it.

Hah..the Coppola 1992 version. I admit, I thought Gary Oldman was really good, really awe-inspiring in a manner. But the rest of the casting was, well---HORRIFIC. Keanu with awful accent, Anthony Hopkins doing his awful Van Helsing, and let's not even talk about Winona Ryder. Though it has some visually wonderful scenes, I'm afraid some of the transgressions have kept me from even considering purchasing it, which is a shame.

And I didn't know the new 2020 version was being created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and believe I can stream it on Netflix.

Yay for streaming.

48housefulofpaper
Mai 14, 2020, 10:40 am

>44 housefulofpaper:
Just made a correction: tuning into to pro-celebrity golf (on television!)

49LolaWalser
Modifié : Mai 14, 2020, 11:10 am

>46 alaudacorax:

I checked for you--the cover illustration is by Michael Koelsch, who specialises in "retro" styles:

https://www.shannonassociates.com/michaelkoelsch

Looks like her "flip-phone" may owe more to the 1990s than 1960s!

>40 housefulofpaper:

The Unhumans is a fine little collection. Priestley's story, The Grey Ones, is a pod-people variant. I don't think I've read anything else by him, from my browsing adventures I associate him with light social history...

Summers published on multiple "occult" themes and if I manage to gather them all I'll show what I have of his titles together--the covers at least tend to be striking. As far as I know he's not considered a valuable academic or even reliable source, but his books have been popular vehicles for dissemination of these themes.

>39 housefulofpaper:

Folio's book design is very hit or miss with me, but I think their "ordinary" edition of Dracula is one of their best ever. That and the Golem they did with Zimakov's illustrations are my favourites.

Have you played with your Gorey theatre at all? :)

Incidentally, I don't know if people overseas know, but in the US (and on DVDs that get distributed in Canada too), very many UK crime series would have been broadcast on the PBS's "Mystery Theatre" for which Gorey did the title sequences--you can see the main version here: Mystery! Title Sequences.

50LolaWalser
Mai 14, 2020, 1:53 pm

Well, my sf hoard pretty much defeated me. Most of it must head to the locker "unmemorialized". Pity, because even this much effort helped me identify some duplicates (triplicates!) and more uncatalogued stuff than I expected. But there just isn't enough time...

Some older, 1950s' anthologies:



A selection of themed anthologies:



And some "Best of..." anthologies dedicated to individual authors:

51LolaWalser
Mai 14, 2020, 2:10 pm

Changing genre for a breather, the James Bond books plus Kingsley Amis' fanboyish tribute plus a less starry-eyed look at Fleming himself and his hero by one Paul Antony and Jacquelyn Friedman.

The Bonds are early-sixties reprints, almost all published in Fleming's lifetime (Octopussy, The man with a golden gun and You only live twice are 1965/6.)

52LolaWalser
Mai 14, 2020, 2:15 pm

A tower of (small paperback) Rex Stout novels about Nero Wolfe, crime-solver and gourmet extraordinaire... Not shown are the oversized trade paperback reprints and the few hardcover, mostly book club editions.

53housefulofpaper
Mai 14, 2020, 8:17 pm


>47 benbrainard8:
I don't know if this is of any use?:


On Blu-ray: All the Universal Draculas (Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr (possibly, or was he really only "Son of Dracula"?), John Carradine. Christopher Lee for Hammer but also for Jess Franco. Jack Palance. David Niven in a spoof (alternatively titled "Old Dracula" - Love at First Bite and Dracula: Dead and Loving It are both better but I only have off-air recordings of those). Jonathan Rhys Myers in his 2013 TV version (cancelled after one season).


On DVD: Max Shreck. Lee. Frank Langella. Klaus Kinski. Louis Jourdan. Gary Oldman. Richard Roxburgh's Dracula is the main villain in Van Helsing. Claes Bang.

54benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 14, 2020, 8:48 pm

Excellent, thank you very much.

Well, for now, I should probably watch first, the versions I've heard most about, the Christopher Lee (1958), Frank Langella (1979), and perhaps even watch the Louis Jordan BBC version again, too.

I'll have to rent/stream each one...before deciding if I should purchase them. Since vampires/vampyres are my favorite monsters, I'd like to have a small but outstanding collection of the films. I also checked out the book, Folio edition of Dracula, it was sold out in US (online), and cost an impressive $400 (US);

I only have one film/DVD version so far---the original Bela Lugosi (1931), I think its same as what you've got in the top photo , very top far left-hand side.

It has an interesting bonus feature: 'Dracula (Original Spanish Version) Filmed simultaneously with the English language version, the Spanish version of Dracula is completely different, yet equally ominous vision of the horror classic. Utilizing the same sets and identical script, cinematographer George Robinson and a vibrant cast including Carlos Villarias and Lupita Tovar'

I didn't know this DVD was part of a larger collection of various 'classic monster' films, a 8 disc-DVD box set. And I'll begin streaming the new 2020 version this weekend on Netflix. Will let you know what I think of it next/coming week.

55housefulofpaper
Mai 14, 2020, 9:05 pm

>49 LolaWalser:
I think the average size of a Folio book has increased in the last couple of decades, and a cover design that looks messy on the website or in promotional material is both more harmonious and has more impact in the flesh - American Gods and Anansi Boys spring to mind as examples.

It's also the case that their designs over the years track, or better to say are part of, British commercial design. Not just that the '70's books look very '70's, but specific people like Robin Jacques are both illustrating Folios and providing illustrations for Radio Times - back when the commercial and technical realities of publishing meant that RT was on horrible cheap newsprint and line drawings and even wood engravings looked better than photographs. Which is not to say that I like the look of very book they produce. Not at all!

The 2009 Dracula is a very attractive book, I agree. I almost passed on the Limited Edition. But as you can see I not only succumbed, I also bought the glow-in-the-dark Amaranthine books edition just a week ago.

I never have set up the Gorey Theatre. Once done, it wouldn't fit back in the box. I came near it just yesterday but I have found out since then that the space will be occupied by a work-supplied PC and monitor within the next three weeks. They're suddenly nervous about me using this (i.e. my own) computer.

I had found or been directed to those Gorey animations. And I knew about Mystery! I even saw one, way back in April 1981, on my only trip to the US (a family holiday). Vincent Price introducing the episode of Cribb featuring Jumbo the elephant (It feels like I've told this story before. Apologies if I've started repeating myself.)

56housefulofpaper
Mai 14, 2020, 9:20 pm

>54 benbrainard8:

I think we have the same disc. Certainly both the most recent UK DVD and Blu-ray include the Spanish Dracula as a bonus feature (they also give you the option of adding Philip Glass' score to the Lugosi film).

That box in my photo (subtitled - I don't know if you can see it - "complete legacy collection") also contains Son of Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And that last one is Lugosi's only other official screen performance as Dracula.

57housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 14, 2020, 9:35 pm

>54 benbrainard8:
Universal have released similarly branded boxes for Frankenstein, The Wolfman (both with an annoying degree of overlap - "House of --" and "Abbott and Costello"), The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Separately, a UK company has released a remastered 1932 The Old Dark House and another one has scheduled remastered Blu-rays of Universal's pre-Code Poe films (that is, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,The Black Cat, and The Raven) for release this summer.

58benbrainard8
Mai 15, 2020, 12:40 pm

Thank you, I'll look up The Old Dark House, The Black Cat, The Murders in Rue Morgue, and The Raven. Yes, I believe we do have the same version of Dracula (1931) because it's got the supplementary score by Philip Glass, performed by the Kronos Quartet.

I'd have to save up my allowance to get the Folio edition of Dracula. But it is wonderful, so...I should save and get it. Right now it says sold out in US online Folio but I'm sure they'll have new supply.

59LolaWalser
Mai 17, 2020, 11:14 am

I'm joining in on the vampire extravaganza... I thought I'd imitate Andrew's tasty display but I can't get to all my Draculi at this point, so instead collected the OTHER vampirical stuff. Not showing Whedon's Angel and Buffy... and whatever I forgot. Oh right--a Drac DID sneak in--but the inclusion is for the The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.



Let's see, top left to bottom right: Vampyres; Daughters of Darkness; Dracula's Fiancee; Jean Rollin 3 movie vampire collection; Lust for a vampire; Count Yorga twofer; The Planet of Vampires; Les Vampires; Dreyer's Vampyr; Hammer 3 movies; MGM 4-movie collection including The Vampire Lovers and a 1957 The Vampire (a doctor turns); The Hammer Horror Series pack of 6 movies including The Kiss of the Vampire (and, Draculian in title, Brides of Dracula, but the vampire being IIRC some young upstart); two of the Dark Shadows movies; Shadow of the Vampire (hmmm--this one should have been paired with Nosferatu, oh well); Twins of Evil; The Monster Club.

Hey--a little quiz question--which one here DOES NOT BELONG? :)

60housefulofpaper
Mai 17, 2020, 11:59 am

>59 LolaWalser:
I did kick myself for missing out The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, and one other title which I knew was lurking in a box. I'll rectify that in a little while.

A quiz! After ruling out "includes a pop song", "is television not film", "does include Dracula" (more than one title fitting the bill each time) I'm going with Les Vampires...unless it's Planet of the Vampires because "space vampires don't count"...if Lifeforce had been included, it would have resolved that little conundrum!

61LolaWalser
Mai 17, 2020, 12:30 pm

>60 housefulofpaper:

I'm going with Les Vampires

Winner!!! 👍🏼👏✔🎈✨🥇

Ha, I missed out on several myself ("Dr. Terror's House of Horror" has a vamp! Would have gone nicely with "The Monster Club"...) but then, when you consider even Blakes 7 has vampires, it takes some effort to remember them all.

62housefulofpaper
Mai 17, 2020, 12:46 pm





Ballet Dracula!

Plus The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires cover showing both actors playing Dracula

63housefulofpaper
Mai 17, 2020, 1:05 pm

>61 LolaWalser:
Argh! I didn't spot that those two Dark Shadows are the spin-off films.

64LolaWalser
Mai 17, 2020, 3:42 pm

>62 housefulofpaper:

Gorey would have loooved a Dracula ballet. That's a great cover on your Golden Vampires. Yes it does have the Count but it's such a tiny role I decided it hardly counts as a Dracula movie...

Well, I started clearing the path to my other horrorish DVDs but it's getting too dark for pics today; maybe tomorrow.

>63 housefulofpaper:

Yes, are you familiar with the old series? I mean, I think we discussed it in the past but I forget if you actually got to watch it in the UK. I do know that Big Finish has a Dark Shadows collection but I'm not sure whether that wasn't due mostly to the Johnny Depp movie (which I haven't seen).

65housefulofpaper
Mai 17, 2020, 7:43 pm

>64 LolaWalser:
I'm sure Dark Shadows was never broadcast in the UK. There's evidence that even second-hand knowledge of it was fairly sparse until around the time of the Tim Burton film (although it only comes from one person! - Barnabas Collins is mentioned in passing in Anno Dracula and Kim Newman gets his nationality wrong, assuming him to be American. In the issue of Video Watchdog devoted to Dark Shadows there's a kind of round-table discussion and Newman says that he doesn't know very much about the show. I'll have to find the issue to remind myself what contribution he makes to the discussion!).

I do have a DVD of some episodes of the original series. This was released around the time of the Tim Burton film and it's the 1967 episodes that introduced Barnabas Collins, so fairly early in the run and black and white. There's a bonus feature that has some clips from the colour episodes. Things seem to be a lot more...out there by then.

Oh, I was forgetting the 1990s TV remake. I did see some of it on Cable/Satellite (The Horror Channel) and it must have been before the film was released, because I had no idea what it was. But I don't think it had much of an impact or raised the profile, as it were, of the original show.

However, that's only my impression. There's some counter-evidence. Big Finish started their Dark Shadows audio dramas and audiobooks back in 2004 (so evidently they not only knew about it but also considered it a commercial proposition). And in 2016 I found three Dark shadows novels - The Curse of Collinwood, The Demon of Barnabas Collins, and Barnabas versus the Warlock in the Oxfam bookshop.

I know I've written about the film before. Briefly, I enjoyed it because I didn't know the series beforehand. If I'd been a fan I would probably hated it. The ending is a let down though, just a big CGI punch-up.

66benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 17, 2020, 10:17 pm

These are great.

I enjoyed "Shadow of the Vampire".

Though not Dracula related, have either of you seen Jim Jarmusch' "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2014) with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton?

I've been a big fan of Tilda since I saw her role in 'Orlando" (1992), which has a great movie soundtrack. And Tom's an interesting actor, really like him in "High-Rise" (2015);

"Only Lovers Left Alive" (2014) had quite a quirky feeling. It reminded me in obtuse way of "Shadow of the Vampire". I love the description of "Shadow the Vampire":

Directed by E. Elias Merhige. With John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier, Cary Elwes. The filming of Nosferatu (1922) is hampered by the fact that its star Max Schreck is taking the role of a vampire far more seriously than seems humanly possible.

Sorry, you'll have to explain to me what "Dark Shadows" is. Is it a T.V. series, like Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone"?

Thank you for sharing!

67housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 18, 2020, 7:29 pm

>58 benbrainard8:
Folio don't usually reprint their limited editions. They used never to do so. They have reprinted a few in less luxurious formats in recent years. If you want that edition you may have to look for a copy on the second-hand market. Be warned though, any copies for sale are likely to have quite a mark up, especially around now when people who have just lost out are willing to pay (what the market will bear/through the nose/too much money - delete as appropriate!)

There are other desirable editions that are available either from the publisher or online in the second-hand market.

I can post more pictures of the editions I have. You might also want to look at:

- The Limited Editions Club (1965).
- Heritage Press (apparently a reprint of the above and a lot cheaper. The only Heritage Press book I have is printed letterpress, as all LEC books were, and I'm at a loss to see in what ways it's so inferior that it makes it so much cheaper. Just the binding?)
- The Dracula from Barnes and Noble with Edward Gorey illustrations.
- The Annotated Dracula edited by Leonard Wolf - this is a oversized book with lots of maps, illustrations etc. Revisions/updates are much less sumptious.
(all the above information came from browsing Amazon, Ebay, and Abe Books listings)

68housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 18, 2020, 8:04 pm

>66 benbrainard8:

Dark Shadows was a US daytime soap opera that ran from the mid-sixties to the early seventies. Wikipedeia has all the details, naturally, and I have only seen a handful of episodes but in essence it began as a Gothic in the Jane Eyre/Rebecca mould, although set in the present day (1960s, that is). The producers addressed the initial low ratings by introducing genuine supernatural elements beginning with the vampire, Barnabas Collins.

There were two spin-off feature films in the '70s (in Lola's picture), a brief TV remake in the early '90s, and a Tim Burton film in 2012(?) with Johnny Depp as the vampire.

Big Finish, the small UK company that produced original Doctor Who audio plays from 1999 (and managed to keep the license after the series came back to television) have produced some original Dark Shadows audio plays and a larger number of audio books, using what looks like an interesting mix of the original US cast, Doctor Who-connected British actors, and their own informal repertory company (which is mostly Doctor Who-connected British actors!).

Edited - "also" corrected to "although set in the present day".

69benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 19, 2020, 8:28 am

Thank you very much for sharing this information. Of course...should have figured that the Folio editions are limited edition sets. So I'll have to be on look-out, via other vendors.

I'll look through the various editions using the list you've got as a guide, so very much appreciated.

Leonard Wolf, ah, I know this name. When I was younger, around age 9-12, I'd a book titled "Wolf's Complete Book of Terror', which is where I first read:

Angel's moon / Kathe Koja
Poor Bibi / Joyce Carol Oates
The ones who walk away from Omelas / Ursula K. Le Guin
The tattooer / Junichiro Tanizaki
Axolotl / Julio Cortazar
The wish / Roald Dahl
The lottery / Shirley Jackson
It's a good life / Jerome Bixby
Born of man and woman / Richard Matheson
The South / Jorge Luis Borges
The fly / George Langelaan
The doll / Algernon Blackwood
The hunted beast / T.F. Powys
The rival dummy / Ben Hecht
Lukundoo / Edward Lucas White
Sredni Vashtar / Saki (a.k.a. H.H. Munro)
The picture in the house / H.P. Lovecraft
Pollock and the Porroh man / H.G. Wells
The spider / Hans Heinz Ewers
The white wolf of the Hartz Mountains / Frederick Marryat
Tcheriapin / Sax Rohmer
The monkey's paw / W.W. Jacobs
The mark of the beast / Rudyard Kipling
Yuki-Onna / Lafcadio Hearn
The squaw / Bram Stoker
The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Carmilla / Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Not to be taken at bed-time / Rosa Mulholland
The Horla / Guy De Maupassant
The black cat / Edgar Allan Poe
The birthmark / Nathaniel Hawthorne
La Belle Helene / Prosper Merimee
Nuckelavee / Anonymous
The painted skin / P'U Sung-ling
Bluebeard / Charles Perrault
The vampire, episode from the golden ass / Lucius Apuleius

It's a wonderful book!

70alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 19, 2020, 8:12 am

Oooooooh, this LT group really threatens one's wallet!!!

>67 housefulofpaper:
I was hunting for that The Annotated Dracula and I came across Leslie S Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula and The New Annotated Frankenstein ... and I was sorely tempted by both (they sound as if they have a lot of fascinating extras, too). By a herculean effort I managed, at the very last second, to swerve them from shopping basket to wish list. Love to know if anyone has copies and any thoughts on them--contents or physical appearance.

>69 benbrainard8:
And then I'm looking at Wolf's Complete Book of Terror and Ben's list of contents. Going on the high quality of those I've read (six that I can remember offhand), and the authors of some of the others, I really want to read that. It does, indeed, sound a wonderful book.

71alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 19, 2020, 8:11 am

>70 alaudacorax:

I suppose it's stupid, really: I have nice hardback editions of a number of books here, but still go to a paperback or the Kindle when I read one of them ...

72benbrainard8
Mai 19, 2020, 8:36 am

I want to find a used edition of "Wolf's Complete Book of Terror", if I cannot find it new. It must have made quite an impression on my young, pre-teen mind, because I still remember my reaction to reading

"Carmilla" /Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
"The Monkey's Paw"/W. W. Jacobs
"The Picture in the House "/H. P. Lovecraft

I've never owned a Kindle, Nook, e-reader. What are advantages? Disadvantages, other than my personal preference for the look, feel, and smell of a book...

73housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 19, 2020, 5:52 pm

>39 housefulofpaper:
I'm at work, so very briefly -
Ignoring the toy theatre and two critical volumes, clockwise from top:
Amaranthine Books Dracula; Four Corners Books Dracula; New Annotated Dracula; Norton Critical Edition Dracula (soft back); Folio Society 2019 Dracula (& slipcase); Folio Society 2009 Dracula.

Happy to describe/take more photos.

74alaudacorax
Mai 19, 2020, 10:09 am

>72 benbrainard8:

One advantage is not having messy accidents with the pages when reading over my meals ...

75LolaWalser
Mai 19, 2020, 10:39 am

>69 benbrainard8:

should have figured that the Folio editions are limited edition sets.

If you look at >39 housefulofpaper: again, centre bottom, the reddish book in the black slipcase with Bram Stoker on it is the Folio Limited Edition (750 copies, sold out). Next to it on the right, with the blood-red lattice motif (as well as the bat and the moon), is Folio's earlier standard, "unlimited" edition. It's currently out of print but as it was much cheaper (I think less than 75 CAD), I expect it might go for less on the secondhand market--less than the LE anyway.

"Wolf's Complete Book of Terror'

That's a fantastic table of contents, I can see why you loved that book. I'm certainly marking that one for when I can go book hunting again...

>65 housefulofpaper:

That's interesting that Big Finish went for producing Dark Shadows without the benefit of a fan base... or wide name recognition. From what I recall of the chatter on GB, it was well received--well, they are still making them, so...

Colour me envious--I've fondled a few DS books, but they are expensive, especially those with Barnabas on the covers.

76alaudacorax
Mai 19, 2020, 10:41 am

>72 benbrainard8:

There are some good, very cheap, complete or collected editions of out of copyright authors available for Kindle (to be honest, there are some really lousy editions, too--you have to look carefully through the reviews). For example, I got Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells for £1-83, which is about $2-24 today. And there is a lot of good, out of copyright stuff on Project Gutenberg that you can download for free and transfer to your Kindle.

If I had paper copies of everything on my Kindle it would be more a case of not having room for the bookshelves than of not having shelf-space.

I have to admit that I also buy for mine a lot of cheap, spur-of-the-moment stuff that I'm probably only ever going to read once and really should have got from the library. That's the evil side of internet+credit card+Kindle--too convenient.

77LolaWalser
Mai 19, 2020, 11:46 am

So, following Andrew's lead in gathering together the representations of Bram Stoker's Dracula on film, including the watershed "Nosferatu" avatar (the name had to be changed because Albin Grau couldn't get the rights to "Dracula"--also, the character's name "in mufti" is actually Count Orlok).



The two interlopers on the right, top row, are a couple of OTHER-vampires I forgot last time--Tony Scott's The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as vampires, and Night Watch, the first of the movies based on Sergei Lukyanenko's fantasy series about a whole mess of demons etc. in Moscow, including some excellent vampires.

Other than that the top row shows the boxes from which I took out some of the DVDs below.

Second row: Nosferatu; the Lugosi Dracula set (4 movies including the Spanish-language simultaneous production); Nosferatu again, the latest Murnau-Stiftung restoration; Jourdan's Dracula for the BBC; Oldman's Dracula; Langella's Dracula.

Third row: Herzog's Nosferatu with Kinski and Adjani; Mark of the Vampire with Lugosi again, directed by Todd Browning again, but unable to use the name "Dracula"; Horror of Dracula; Dracula has risen from the grave; Taste the blood of Dracula, all three with Lee for Hammer; Dan Curtis' Dracula with Jack Palance.

Fourth row: Shadow of the vampire, with Willem Dafoe playing Max Schreck playing Nosferatu; Return of the vampire, with Lugosi again, here called "Armand Tesla" but THE Dracula in everything but name; a 4-movie Hammer Drac pack here shown for Dracula A.D. 1972; Dracula Prince of Darkness; a 3-fer shown for The Satanic rites of Dracula; Abbott & Costello collection with the Frankenstein spoof Lugosi appears in as Dracula.

Not shown the Ed Wood collection with Plan 9 from outer space, containing the last footage of Lugosi in the iconic black cape, nor Tim Burton's Ed Wood, with Martin Landau playing Lugosi playing Dracula for Ed Wood.

78housefulofpaper
Mai 19, 2020, 1:28 pm

>73 housefulofpaper:

I've created a separate thread for more images of my editions of Dracula.

If anyone has any interesting editions please feel free to add them to the thread.

79housefulofpaper
Mai 19, 2020, 6:40 pm

>66 benbrainard8:
I love Only Lovers Left Alive. It has its own atmosphere but does remind me of other things too. Not Shadow of the Vampire, so much, but Jim Jarmusch's earlier films (I don't know all his work but certainly Down by Law and Mystery Train). Also, in the way the vampires talk to one another, their perspectives, reminded me of the way Russell T. Davies wrote for the Doctor in Doctor Who . Maybe there's a particular way British actors imagine being immortal or immensely long-lived. However, the sensual focus on books, vintage instruments, the nighttime Detroit and Tangiers, I don't think I have seen in the same way anywhere else. Thank you for mentioning it, I watched it again today.

>69 benbrainard8:
That's an excellent selection for an anthology. Of course there's a law of diminishing returns with anthologies. I think I've got at least 75% of those stories in other collections.

>71 alaudacorax:
I do like to read in a nice edition, and as as I get older the size of the print becomes more important. But for commuting, or soaking in the bath, a paperback is best. That's why the current trend not to laminate the covers irks me.

I've never owned an e-reader of any kind. I might be converted, especially if I go on long journeys again after the current situation eases.

>77 LolaWalser:
My turn to be envious. I have never been able to get hold of a copy, or even see, The Return of the Vampire. I worked out that I first read about it, and about all the classic movie monsters, in a book I received for Christmas 1975...so I've been waiting a long time.

80benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 20, 2020, 12:31 pm

Thank you both. Sorry, I've got to keep this a little short, I got caught up in the Goth Music, Post 1970s thread today, whew.

I couldn't find the Leonard Wolf book yet, but I did manage to just purchase these two books:

"Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction" , edited by Leonard Wolf

"Weird Tales of Terror," by Sèphera Girón

Will write more later, when I've read through what you've got above thoroughly. Cheers to you both!

81benbrainard8
Mai 20, 2020, 9:00 pm

But I really understand that because you're trying to keep your special editions, hmmm, Special!

82benbrainard8
Mai 20, 2020, 9:32 pm

Trying to keep tabs on which anthologies have what. Yes, that'd be a challenge. Maybe that's why I don't have that many, and now the few that I do have are fairly specialized, narrow in scope.

So, in our Gothic/Sci-Fi/Horror genres, my anthologies are pretty specific:

The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (that I just bought/received)
The Complete Stories, Vol 1, (The Complete Stories #1), by Isaac Asimov, Published October 1st 1990 by Broadway
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, by Ray Bradbury
Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction, edited by Leonard Wolf (hasn't arrived yet, on the way!)
The Big Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Otto Penzler
The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler (ah, perhaps it'll overlap with "Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction"?)
Complete Tales and Poems, by Edgar Allan Poe, Paperback, 1027 pages, Published September 12th 1975 by Vintage (first published 1849)

That's really about it...for now. I'll definitely be on look out for a definitive book that has collection(s) from the "Weird Tales", perhaps another for collected works from "Metal Hurlant", though I know those are graphic comics (no?), and the ever elusive "Wolf's Complete Book of Terror".

Ok, so it looks like Kindle, Nook, e-readers are good

-- for saving shelf space, therefore saving space in general
-- avoiding spilling coffee, tea, or spilling food on a book you really treasure
-- to help in keeping your eyes fresh esp. if you can read in larger font size(s)
-- can perhaps save a lot of money by getting inexpensive, and even open source, reading materials that might be available

Hmm.... guess I should consider getting one. But not just yet, as I've still got about 150 books on my shelves that I've got to read. And who knows what types of e-readers will be available in the future? I would love to find one that can directly translate a book written in a foreign language quickly---that might be just around the corner.

How do you feel about audio books? I've never listened to any, so feel like a dinosaur. Well, that and having no e-reader...maybe I'm already a dinosaur.

Thank you so much for sharing your images of your collections... Very impressive!

83WeeTurtle
Mai 21, 2020, 2:27 am

I've been going through my mom's book collection which is mostly historical and romance stuff, but I've been selecting all the "gothic" books I've been finding, the franchise sort that almost always have a picture of a dark castle with a foggy more or craggy cliffs, along with a women in a gossamer white gown. I'm not there to actually see the books, my sister is sending me pictures so I can make my judgement calls from here.

I'm enjoying audio books. I have an e-reader, but it's also a dinosaur, and doesn't do audio as far as I know. I use an app called "Libby" that allows e-book/audio downloads from local libraries. Otherwise, I use youtube for short stories mostly.

84Rembetis
Mai 21, 2020, 12:06 pm

The Gothic Society started around 1990 and wound up in 1998. Over that time, around 35 issues of their periodical were produced, as well as special monographs, such as an excellent one on 'Horace Walpole and William Beckford'. The magazine was initially called 'The Goth', then changed to 'Udolpho'. I thought you might like to see some of the striking covers (please pardon my rotten photography):





























85LolaWalser
Mai 21, 2020, 12:16 pm

>84 Rembetis:

Marvellous, thanks. I can't decide between "Hyena in petticoats" and Puss-in-Boots as my fave... And "Antique Towers and Vacant Courts"... is that for sale? :)

So what's the story behind the foundation and much-too-early termination of The Gothic Society?

86housefulofpaper
Mai 21, 2020, 3:45 pm

>84 Rembetis:
Wonderful! I wish I'd known about this at the time.

Trying to guess from the articles named on the covers, it looks like Fortean Times and Wormwood (from the Tartarus Press) covers some of the same ground.

87housefulofpaper
Mai 21, 2020, 6:03 pm

>82 benbrainard8:

I don't usually listen to audiobooks. I don't drive and I haven't had to commute to work for 20 years so there hasn't been a lot of time where I have to sit still but can't easily read a physical book. That could change - I'm a dinosaur too but I have a mobile phone and, amzing! Bluetooth headphones, plus the uncomfortable awareness that I should be taking more exercise. So maybe audiobooks could feature more in the future.

That said, I think I'll continue to favour dramatisations and non-fiction podcasts/audio documentaries. The "wrong" reading spoils a story for me.

88housefulofpaper
Mai 21, 2020, 7:07 pm

>82 benbrainard8:
Trying to keep tabs on which anthologies have what.

Hmm. You could manually enter the contents into the comments section for each book.

And/or IF every single story has been entered separately into LibraryThing already (which, I seem to remember used to be frowned upon; but I guess that's gone by the board, now that we can enter e-books, sound files and all sorts of things, on all sorts of formats) you can create a "work-to-work relationship". But that's all pretty labour-intensive and for the second method the stories may not all already be entered here as "works".

89Rembetis
Mai 21, 2020, 8:30 pm

>85 LolaWalser: >86 housefulofpaper: Hello. Wow - both your contributions to this page are amazing, please keep them coming! What a brilliant collection you both have, with so many fabulous covers. I am especially taken with the pulpy paperbacks, the Weird Tales and Ghost collections, Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu! And, phew, the vampire dvd collections!

>85 LolaWalser: You're probably well aware, but the 'hyena in petticoats' quote on 'The Goth' is from Horace Walpole, about Mary Wollstonecraft. Walpole took offence at her book 'The Vindication of the Rights of Women'! The Puss in Boots cover is because of an article in that issue on Gustave Dore. The 'Antique Towers' cover is indeed gorgeous!

The Gothic Society was founded in 1990 by Jennie Gray, a one woman enterprise at the beginning. She had a stall at the Small Press Fair with the first issue of 'The Goth' and sold lots of issues there, and the Society took off. It's mission statement - "to celebrate the black comedy of life and to indulge in what some commentators see as a perverse taste for the morbid, the macabre, and the darkly romantic". By 1994 there were over 1,000 members.

I am not entirely sure why the Society folded. In the final issue of 'Udolpho', Jennie wrote a 'funeral oration' for the Society. She says in 1994, her father died, which had a devastating effect on her life, and because of subsequent 'extraordinary things' which happened to her family, her attention left the Society and on to other 'strange paths'.

>86 housefulofpaper: I first became aware of The Gothic Society in the early 1990s, through an ad in 'The Sunday Times' I can't recall the Society being publicised very widely; didn't see any other ads for it elsewhere.

The Society magazine is similar to 'Fortean Times' but not much emphasis on modern weird phenomena (apart from the Highgate Vampire madness), but lots on mainly 17th to 19th century weird phenomena, events, people, and architecture. It is also similar to 'Wormwood' but concentrated largely (but not exclusively) on gothic or gothic related literature, and the media that came from it (films, books, illustrations etc). It didn't have as wide a remit as 'Wormwood'.

90alaudacorax
Mai 22, 2020, 4:25 am

>82 benbrainard8:,>88 housefulofpaper:

1: I enter the short stories as separate works--I enquired when I started and was assured there was no problem with that.
2: I put them in a special collection. I have two: 'Works in e-omnibi' and 'Works in physical omnibi'.
3: I make sure they are NOT in 'My Library' or 'My Kindle' (everything else I own is in one of these).
4: I tag them with the name of the collection they're in. I used to put tags like "in 'The Start Lord Dunsany Super Pack'", then I realised the 'in' and the inverted commas were pointless and just went with the plain title.

91Rembetis
Mai 22, 2020, 7:12 am

A few more from The Gothic Society - note the mis-spelling of 'Egar' Allan Poe on the cover of the Winter 94 issue! Also, a few of my paperbacks.

















92LolaWalser
Mai 22, 2020, 11:37 am

>89 Rembetis:

the 'hyena in petticoats' quote on 'The Goth' is from Horace Walpole, about Mary Wollstonecraft.

Oh yes--that's my favourite portrait of hers.

The "antique towers and vacant courts" sounded like an advert for some "Gothic Real Estate" enterprise. :)

It's mission statement - "to celebrate the black comedy of life and to indulge in what some commentators see as a perverse taste for the morbid, the macabre, and the darkly romantic"

Jennie Gray sounds like a kindred spirit. Hope she's well and prospering, wherever at whatever.

>91 Rembetis:

All those Udolpho issues look highly attractive, but, OH MY--Vincent Price pulps, I need them yesterday! Yet another bookhunting target for when the nightmare ends...

93bookstopshere
Mai 22, 2020, 3:58 pm

I've been spending my quarantine time weeding the dupes from the libraries - no Udolphos (they look sensational) but lots of Arkhams, Centipede Press, Subterranean, Lovecraft and Cthulhu related "stuff" and hundreds of anthologies (ghosts, horror, fantasy, etc). If anyone is interested on LT, I can post pics or reply to "want lists"before I put 'em on facebook or eBay. Just let me know

94LolaWalser
Mai 22, 2020, 9:49 pm

>93 bookstopshere:

Sounds very interesting. Personally I prefer bookshop browsing (we are not well served when it comes to shipping in Canada) but there may be other takers here.

>79 housefulofpaper:

You probably already know this, or maybe it's of no use to you... Sony released a Blu-Ray of The Return of the vampire last year, here's one write-up:

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/the-return-of-the-vampire-blu-ray-review/

I'd have to watch it again before going into detail, but I remember it as one of my favourite Lugosi Draculas, second only to the first Browning movie. Has tons of atmosphere, real pathos (there's a subplot with a werewolf servant who wants to regain humanity or die), and, although this is foggy in my memory, a really great female role (maybe uniquely so in this set). The scene of Lugosi's awakening is also smashing.

All in all, it would be a great pity if you missed out on it.

95alaudacorax
Mai 22, 2020, 10:31 pm

>94 LolaWalser:

Wow. Another film I have absolutely no memory of ever seeing. I've really got to see that one.

96bookstopshere
Mai 23, 2020, 1:33 am

sadly, you are right about shipping to Canada. I gave away a dust jacket this week and it was 20.00 to ship it to Kamloops. Media mail in the US has spoiled me terribly.

97WeeTurtle
Mai 23, 2020, 2:21 am

>91 Rembetis: Oh that old copy of The Dark is Rising is neat! I've never read the whole series, just that and The Grey King. I think it was the wrong sort of fantasy for me at the time I read Grey King. It was old Arthurian stuff and I wanted dragons and unicorns. I should try reading it again. I still remember it though, so that says something.

Canada's post is ugly, that's for sure. I use a cheat. I have friends in Washington and my sister maintains a US. Post box, so I ship to her and then she'll bring it back up on one of her trips, although no travelling right now.

98alaudacorax
Mai 23, 2020, 4:18 pm

>94 LolaWalser:

Just watched The Return of the Vampire following your mention. Great fun--I enjoyed it. It creaked a bit in places and I failed to grasp the various relationships in the central family(?), but a good old-fashioned horror none the less. That strong female role was unusual--I was a little disappointed she didn't stake anybody. Nice twist at the end, too. Particularly good visually.

99LolaWalser
Mai 23, 2020, 4:49 pm

>98 alaudacorax:

Glad to hear you liked it! It's one of the last movies where Lugosi looked good, and in a decent role, so it's extra poignant for that...

100housefulofpaper
Mai 23, 2020, 6:13 pm

The available discs are all Region A or Region 1 locked - but there's a copy uploaded to Dailymotion. I will watch it this weekend. Finally!

101LolaWalser
Mai 25, 2020, 5:57 pm

What Universal has united, let no gossip tear apart... A small tribute to the legendary collaboration of Lugosi and Karloff, Count Dracula and the Monster of Frankenstein... plus some other stuff:



Top row: two copies of the Kronos Quartet performing Philip Glass' soundtrack for Dracula, with different sleeve cover. A CD of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's dead" song (plus "Boys" and "The dog's a vapour". (On the back there's a still from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari--Cesare carrying unconscious Jane.)

Second row: The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi by Arthur Lennig, a book I haven't finished in thirteen years because I always break off before the saddest part; the Dracula film set from before; the Bela Lugosi collection with Murders in the Rue Morgue; The Black Cat; The Raven; The Invisible Ray; Black Friday. The last four are all with Karloff. Lugosi in White Zombie. Karloff and Lugosi by G. W. Mank.

Third row: Island of Lost Souls, so far the only Lugosi film to have received the Criterion treatment; a collection of Karloff's Frankenstein movies including The Son of Frankenstein, in which Lugosi plays "Ygor"; item from the Val Lewton box set with The Body Snatcher, the last film with Karloff and Lugosi together; a Karloff 4 movie box set; Peter Underwood's biography of Karloff.

102benbrainard8
Mai 26, 2020, 9:53 pm

Excellent! And you put the Bauhaus quintessential cover, too.

103LWMusic
Modifié : Mai 27, 2020, 10:26 am

>102 benbrainard8:

Is it still a "single" if it has three songs? :)

ETA: oops, posting from the second account--still me, Elle Oui...

104housefulofpaper
Mai 27, 2020, 11:01 am

>103 LWMusic:

12" singles usually had three tracks, I seem to remember....

105LolaWalser
Mai 27, 2020, 12:15 pm

Do you know, I can't recall ever buying a vinyl single? I started spending my allowance on books and LPs with teenage years, in mid-80s, and by then the CDs were already showing up. Vinyl was then still much cheaper so I amassed a collection, but by 1992 I was buying only CDs. Then vinyl disappeared, except secondhand.

On CD, it always seems an affectation, but I have some... most memorably, The Dresden Dolls single Amanda Palmer and Bob Viglione signed for me.

106housefulofpaper
Mai 27, 2020, 5:01 pm

>105 LolaWalser:

I wasn't a big buyer of singles but it used to be the only way of getting all the tracks from an artist you liked.

I thought I had "Moon Over Bourbon Street" by Sting, which would have been appropriate as it's inspired by Interview With the Vampire, but it evidently got culled from my collection at some point.

I imagine this has more cred than Sting, anyway! It's the back cover of the 12" of "Bury Me Deep in Love" by the Triffids. I chose this, well clearly because I'm such an annoying pedant. But the reason I told myself is that I chose it because it shows the three tracks on the record.

Also, it also looks Gothic. Although the Triffids aren't, I believe, considered to be a Goth band. Their subject matter was often deeply, romantically Gothic but the style is Australian Country Rock by way of New Wave, I suppose.



107LolaWalser
Mai 28, 2020, 12:44 pm

>106 housefulofpaper:

The upside-down country! Thanks, nice song (Bury Me Deep In Love), and the others it led me to. Violin! I like to see rockers with a violin.

108Rembetis
Juin 4, 2020, 7:40 pm

>92 LolaWalser: I love my Vincent Price pulps! 'The Price of Fear' one goes for stupid money these days on ebay.

>97 WeeTurtle: I first read the 'Dark is Rising' series way back in the day. I re-read them all a few years ago, and they are hit and miss (the final book is the weakest methinks). My favourite is 'The Dark is Rising' - it still holds up very well; and that edition in my post is one of my favourite book covers.

>101 LolaWalser: Excellent collection of Universal stuff!

>106 housefulofpaper: I purchased hundreds of vinyl singles and 12" singles - still have most of them and still play vinyl. My favourite releases were when extra material was released, for example Kate Bush's 12" of 'Cloudbusting' had the beautiful acapella folk song 'My Lagan Love'.

109housefulofpaper
Juin 4, 2020, 8:05 pm

>108 Rembetis:

I have that 12"! Although I foolishly bought a lot of stuff on cassette back then.

110LolaWalser
Juin 4, 2020, 8:21 pm

>109 housefulofpaper:

I still have several hundred cassettes. The biggest challenge nowadays is finding something with a cassette player.

111Rembetis
Juin 4, 2020, 8:26 pm

>109 housefulofpaper: Excellent! The 12" vinyl of 'My Lagan Love' sounds richer and rounder to me than the recent remastered cd version (maybe that's just me).

I did buy some cassettes too, but not too many. I can still play cassettes, (yes, I am a dinosaur), but some of my tapes are virtually unplayable, so degraded. I also have some reel to reel tapes my late grandmother recorded back in the early 1960s, and they play fine on her Portadyne reel to reel player, which I inherited, and still works.

112Rembetis
Juin 4, 2020, 8:34 pm

>110 LolaWalser: I still have a cassette deck unit on my hifi. It's old! I also purchased a 'USB Cassette capture' which plays cassette tapes and allows me to transfer the cassette to MP3 on my computer (it was relatively cheap, about £18). Useful for transferring old singalongs family made at get togethers in the 60s and 70s. I also use the 'USB' contraption as a portable cassette player.

113LolaWalser
Juin 4, 2020, 8:54 pm

Good tip, I didn't know those things can play tapes on their own (oh--do you have to listen via earphones?) I have a boombox in the closet in case I should absolutely need to listen to something on the tapes (err, can't think what, maybe the ex-lovers' mix tapes?...:)), and my LP player is one of those new-fangled with USB ports and transfer capabilities, but I'm just tired of the endless proliferation of these things.

Once upon a time I had a piano and a gramophone and I was so happy...

114Rembetis
Juin 5, 2020, 6:52 am

>113 LolaWalser: Yes, you have to use earphones, though they are so tinny, so I use headphones!

115housefulofpaper
Sep 6, 2020, 3:43 pm


While I was still wondering what had happened to my LEC Dracula I saw in the George Macy Devotees group the news that Oak Knoll Press was having a sale, with plenty of Limited Edition Club books included.

So I had a look and ended up placing an order (only slightly apprehensive, because I've ordered from them before).

Five weeks+ later, they hadn't turned up.

I contacted Oak Knoll and they told me that after about five weeks the order would have to be considered as lost. They offered a partial replacement order; they still had copies of the books I'd ordered (but I'd ordered the copies in the best condition, grrr!) and I decided to pay extra for postage, so the order would be tracked.

Ok, fine, these things happen. Honestly, the worst of it for me was these old books (not exactly irreplaceable but by any measure a limited resource) going missing.

Next morning, the postman bangs on the door. A huge yellow postal sack. You can guess what's in it. Fire off a further email to Oak Knoll, wait half a day for a reply (where in different timezones of course)...I got to them in time, they cancelled the replacement order. All is good.

Except, the sack still has its tags from flying into the UK. It was flew from Zurich to Heathrow 26/27 July...and that sat about in the UK postal system for a month!


I apologise for the thoughts I was having about the US postal service, and many thanks to Erin at Oak Knoll for all her help!

Anyway, here's one of the books from my order: The LEC edition of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw:

Here's the book in its slip-case, which is a bit beaten up.


Here's the book spine-on. The glassine is pretty fragile and sheds little flakes no matter how careful I am.


Here's the front cover. The book itself is in good condition (maybe I mean "fine". I don't 100% grasp the subtleties of bookseller terminology. There's nothing wrong with it, especially given its age.).


Title page and frontispiece.No newsletter laid in with this one.


And a couple of the interior illustrations.


116housefulofpaper
Sep 6, 2020, 5:46 pm

XX
This is the other book from my Oak Knoll order that's relevant to this group. Didn't Frahealee recommend it earlier in the year?

It's The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter and as you can see Ambrose Bierce is credited as the author. The full story of the tale's authorship is actually rather murky, as explained in the introduction. But briefly, a young German practicing dentistry in San Francisco took a story to Bierce, that he had, he said, freely translated and extended from the German original of Richard Voss; but his English wasn't up to the task and his version needed a polish.

Bierce took on the job and the story was originally published in serial form by The San Francisco Examiner as by "Dr G. A. Danziger and Ambrose Bierce". Book publication was arranged but contingent on Bierce taking principal credit. This was 1892. By the end of the century (to quote the introduction) "Bierce was quite convinced of the primacy of his authorship".

Apparently nobody bothered to check Voss' original against the translation until the 1930s. It turns out that Danziger and Bierce added almost nothing to the tale but instead produced a faithful "Englished " version.

Danziger, by the way, later changed his name to Adolphe de Castro and is principally remembered now as one of the clients of H. P. Lovecraft's writing service (editing, mentoring, and often completely rewriting stories for authors and would-be authors).

That's not actually the spine of the book you can see. This one is protected by a "chemise" ("the medieval precursor of the dust jacket" says Wikipedia. in recognition of the story's setting?). In this case it's made of paper over board, like a spare book cover, or a ring binder without the rings.



Here's the cover under it's glassine cover (which is in good shape; in fact I have a suspicion this book has never been read).



Title page and frontispiece - it's from 1967, although the process of uploading the picture here has made it look like "1957".




117LolaWalser
Sep 7, 2020, 11:59 am

Very nice additions to your collection. Yes, the shipping is a bigger headache than ever these days but (small consolation as that is), trust that you're no worse off than even Canadian customers when it comes to purchases from the US.

I'm still kicking myself regularly for ignoring the LEC and Heritage books when I lived in the US. Buying them online was always regrettable in comparison, and since the costs sky-rocketed a few years ago, basically I don't bother anymore.

Mariette Lydis was a very interesting person living in interesting times... Most recently she came to my attention again in the monograph about women artists in Vienna (Stadt der Frauen)--there was also a first exhibition dedicated to her in 2017. She used to be much better known in her time--but that's the story of so many lives interrupted by the WWII.

I have the Heritage Press version of Gay's The Beggar's opera with her illustrations--you may want to take a look at that edition if you're not aware of it already...

118housefulsfilmtv
Sep 24, 2020, 9:16 am

I mistakenly looked at copies of the LEC version and decided they were beyond my budget at present. The Heritage Press is seems a far more reasonable proposition.

I had read that publishing during the Depression had given LEC access to artists that might reasonably have been assumed to be beyond its grasp

119LolaWalser
Sep 26, 2020, 9:15 pm

Of the Heritage Press versions I was able to compare to their LEC counterparts, the two Lydis-illustrated titles, The beggar's opera and The turn of the screw, have been the cases where I easily chose the HP with no regrets about leaving the LEC behind. However, I'm not quite the letterpress maniac high-end bibliophile collectors might be, it's really the overall design and "feel" of the book that matter to me the most.

FWIW (all this is so subjective...), on that account the HP versions get top marks (not being much of a Henry James fan I gave the Turn of the Screw to someone else... and of course I do have lingering regrets over that, but that's just phantom book-greed pain :)).

120housefulofpaper
Jan 28, 2021, 8:00 pm

It's high time to resurrect this thread. Here are some books from British small publisher Egaeus Press, whose first book came out in 2012. Their website tempts the reader with the promise of "Morbid and Fantastical Works".

They mostly publish single-author short story collections, but themed anthologies have become something of a signature for them and these have a habit of selling out very quickly (the numbers printed of any title are small, of course. Bitter Distillations is in an edition of 340). They have brought out some novels as well, but no more than three, i think.

They have also started a smaller sized "Keynote Edition" range, and there are three titles from this range included in the first photo (just the spines, which was something of an oversight. Design-wise these are in a uniform edition).



Decorative endpapers are a feature of the main titles. Here is some Victorian arsenical wallpaper, reproduced as apt endpapers for Bitter Distillations.


Title page and contents page. Of course, to an large extent the press shares the same pool of talent as the other presses currently publishing new fantasy, horror, weird and gothic works - Tartarus, Sarob, Swan River Press in Ireland, Zagava in Germany, for example.





Some more covers. The Reggie Oliver book was the first one from the press.






121Bookmarque
Jan 28, 2021, 8:56 pm

Those look great! Haunting.

122housefulofpaper
Jan 28, 2021, 9:07 pm


benbrainard8

I've been rereading this thread and can add to your Weird Tales and Dracula enquiries, I think.

Here are a couple of Weird Tales-related books. C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore created two characters whose adventures were published in the magazine, Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith. Jirel is one of the first female Sword and Sorcery protagonists. Smith has been described as a sort of proto-Han Solo. This is a UK paperback but there must be many US titles collecting Moore's Weird Tales fiction.

The book on the right is a recent anthology from Valancourt Books that, as it says on the cover, collects stories from women who wrote for Weird Tales.



Re. Dracula, specifically nice or fancy editions. Easton Press did a big deluxe edition illustrated with paintings by Rick Berry. This is sold out but can still be seen on their website. I haven't looked into its availability on the second-hand market.

But another option is looking for an older edition. Easton have the rights to many LEC editions which they reprint (in admittedly less sumptuous editions e.g. printed lithographically not letterpress, reduced size, colour illustrations reproduced in black and white. I have an Easton Press edition of Poe's poems like this that originates in an LEC from the '40s. I do like the repeating Raven design on the cover. I believe there's a version of Dracula from Easton with a similar bat design (but beware - I think they've done Dracula many times and most of their covers seem to be (to my eyes) rather generic tooled designs).

123housefulofpaper
Jan 28, 2021, 9:45 pm

>121 Bookmarque:
They're lovely, aren't they. I can't think why I haven't uploaded pictures of them before now.

>122 housefulofpaper:
And that photo in >1 housefulofpaper:...all the books in the top row before Orlando are wholly or partly reprints from Weird Tales.

124alaudacorax
Jan 29, 2021, 12:21 am

>120 housefulofpaper:

You've prompted me to have a look at the Egaeus Press website. There is some really attractive and tempting stuff on there.

As it happens, I've recently been checking out the equally tempting Tartarus Press; pondering whether to buy their Arthur Machen editions. I'd really love to have them and was really, really tempted, but decided, for now at least, to spend my money for completion, via the Hippocampus Press softcovers. But, some day, some day ...

125alaudacorax
Jan 29, 2021, 6:30 am

>120 housefulofpaper:, >124 alaudacorax:

On the subject of Machen and Egaeus Press, I found The Greenwood Faun extremely enticing, for content and appearance; but it's currently available only at £70-plus, much more than I'd be prepared to pay. That's probably just as well as, having just found your short review elsewhere, I see that it's not quite the 'new Machen' I'd been imagining. It struck me, though, that designs very similar to that one would be very appropriate for new editions of Machen himself—for me, it has a Machen feel, somehow.

Sorry, got myself a bit obsessed with Machen at the moment ...

126housefulofpaper
Modifié : Fév 3, 2021, 8:14 pm

>124 alaudacorax:

Well, here are just about all my Arthur Machen books. I think only the Penguin Classics paperback is missing.

Starting off with a reprint of Machen's first publication, the poem Eleusinia. The novel The Three Impostors from the publisher of the same name. The original edition of Hieroglyphics and the Tartarus Press reprint. The Tartarus press (recent paperback) edition of the very rare The House of the Hidden Light. Occult text or a private joke between Machen and A. E. Waite about going to the pub?


A Fragment of Life hidden on the left, Tartarus Press edition of The House of Souls (dust jacket off to show the decorated boards). The Hill of Dreams. The two chapters of The Secret Glory that we not included on the novel's original publication, and the Tartarus edition of the whole novel including those two chapters.


The most recent Tartarus edition of The Secret Glory. I've taken the dustjacket off this one as well.
The essay On Paganism paired with a similarly themed essay by Mitchell S. Buck. Ornaments in Jade. An edition of the autobigraphical work Far Off Things from The Three Impostors (the publisher).


More autobiography, The London Adventure is more difficult to categorise -a postmodern books bout writing the book, or a work of proto-psychogeography? The novel The Green Round (the Arkham House edition seems to be the easiest to get hold of). An edition of short stories.


More short stories. I was trying to do this in roughly the order of original publication but have gone astray here. The final short story collection issued in Machen's lifetime is followed by Tartarus' collection from the early '90s, a collection of essays, the short story "N" published to coincide with a Convention, Arthur Machen'dsNotebook which was published by and only available from The Friends of Arthur Machen (as was, I should have said, the copy of Eleusinia).


Letters, letters, and essays


Tartarus' main Machen volume for years, until they lost the publishing rights (I think), and the two volumes of autobiography as one combined volume. First published just after Machen's death, in 1948 and 1951 respectively. These are the Tartarus Press editions of course.


Recent short story collections plus the Three Impostors edition of "The Great God Pan" (coupled with "The Inmost Light" as was the original Keynotes edition).


Reproductions of the occult catalogues Machen complied in his early years in London. Unfortunately the reproduction of light ink on darkened paper makes for a very challenging read. I could literally only attempt it in strong summer sunlight with a magnifying glass. And critical essays, two "lives" (one along the lines of a Fontana Modern Masters, the other a full-on biography), Occult Territory attempts to track down all the real-life locations Machen was connected with.


The book on the left is a bit of a rarity. It's an early Tarturus Press book and Ray Russell (aka R. B. Russell) found a few unbound copies years later and offered them in this variant cover, first come first served. And three early publications from The Three Impostors, Machen-related essays as individual booklets.


Finally, the regular publications you get as a Friend of Arthur Machen, Faunus and Machenalia, and (on the left) a collection of essays from Faunus.


127housefulofpaper
Jan 29, 2021, 8:59 pm

>125 alaudacorax:
I remember writing a little while ago that reading about late Victorian seances, and specifically the focus on ectoplasm - mediums producing it, investigators from The Society for Pyschical Research trying to bottle samples, and so on - threw light on the shape-shifting in "The Novel of the Black Seal" (and thinking about it, "The Novel of the White Powder" and "The Great God Pan" too). The period of Aubrey Beardsley's career when he was producing his "grotesques" felt very Machenesque when I saw then at Tate Britain last year. Beardsley was absolutely central to the Decadent Movement in Britain and designed the Keynote editions.

The prices that small press books can reach are daunting. i think it's partly why I've ended up buying so many on publication. If I pass on a book and regret it later, and try to get it on the second hand market it's likely to cost a lot more.

128alaudacorax
Jan 30, 2021, 5:57 am

>126 housefulofpaper:

Wow. A collection to be envied.

I particularly like the Tartarus Press hardbacks. I suspect, though, it would always be a question with me whether have them in a pleasing uniform row in their dustjackets or without and nicely individual.

And that’s got me thinking about the purpose of dustcovers! Should one, perhaps, have books on the shelves in them, setting them aside when taking a book down to read … and drool over the binding?

129alaudacorax
Jan 30, 2021, 5:58 am

>127 housefulofpaper: - I think it's partly why I've ended up buying so many on publication.

For some reason, I can never commit to these small press editions; then I invariably regret it later. Often in a matter of weeks, spending a few weeks mulling it over and then finding it's sold out and prices are sky-high on AbeBooks!

Actually, now I've written that, I think it's more a question of committing to an author. Do I care enough about this author to collect him or her in attractive hardback editions? By the time I've made up my mind on that, I've missed my chance on some nice editions. I suppose I should, right now, start thinking about a list of authors I’d like in attractive hardbacks, and then start keeping my eye on these small publishers.

130benbrainard8
Modifié : Jan 31, 2021, 7:34 pm

Thank you all, and wow---those are indeed some beautiful books, editions. I feel like such an amateur, looking at them!

131housefulofpaper
Fév 2, 2021, 7:51 pm

>129 alaudacorax:
To a degree I've given up some autonomy in choosing my reading matter. Buying each new book on publication just on the strength of the blurb on the website, or just buying "the new one" without thinking about it at all, is a lot like being in a book club. Someone is choosing my reading material for me. This can open up new areas of literature - the classic literature, eyewitness accounts from history, big "classic" history books, and so on, that formed the Folio Society's core offering (sorry, horrid word but I couldn't think of a better one) 25 years ago introduced me to much that I wouldn't have picked up left to my own devices. Similarly the intersections of Weird, Horror, Fantasy, and Decadence were new worlds, pretty much, 15-20 years ago and diving in was an intellectual adventure - and a fun reading experience too, of course.

I don't like abandoning a book unfinished. Intellectually I understand the sunk cost fallacy, and realistically I may not get around to reading all the books I've already purchased before dying at a ripe old age, let alone any future purchases, but starting a book and not finishing it worms away at my head forever after, even if I could have happily capered through half a dozen books in the time I stop-started through one.

But there ARE books that take fire halfway through (and it's the reader's fault not the books). I trudged through Ulysses but around the halfway mark, apparently where a lot of readers find it suddenly harder going and give up, suddenly I was off and finished it in a weekend as if it was a thriller.

On collecting authors, the small press world makes it potentially confusing/difficult/ annoying. Swan River Press have republished a couple of scarce Ex Occidente books as reasonably priced hardbacks. Tarturus Press's original 2-volume Aickman was going for four figures on the second hand market then they reprinted all the original short story collections, plus extra material (uncollected fiction, two volumes of autobiography, and most recently a previously unpublished novel. Ironically, there's a review out there that says this IS a book where only half of it is good!). Zagava Press are publishing what looks to be a uniform, lavish hardback collection of Mark Samuels' work. Much of that started off in cheap paperbacks. So buying now is a lot more expensive (although I haven't checked the current prices of those paperbacks!)

132housefulofpaper
Fév 2, 2021, 8:01 pm

>130 benbrainard8:

Thank you. Seeing them pictured like that does bring home that I've done pretty well. The Machens have built up over 13-14 years, and most we just the new book from Tartarus Press. There weren't any exciting finds in out-of-the way bookshops, sadly (the closest things to that were finding the edition of the letters in the Atlantis Bookshop, which is a venerable Occult bookshop near the British Museum, and browsing AbeBooks on a whim and finding a first edition of Hieroglyphics on offer.

If you're interested in Arthur Machen it might be worth your while looking on something like AbeBooks. He experienced something of a critical renaissance in the 1920s and it started in the States. There were some attractive reprint and collected editions on both sides of the Atlantic (from the listings it seems that a fair amount of UK material had made the journey west in the last century!). Without the postage from the US to the UK, the prices seem pretty reasonable.

133housefulofpaper
Modifié : Fév 3, 2021, 5:52 pm

I hope this is going to prove a treasure and not an extravagance!

I've been aware of this work (eventually to spread over three volumes) for a while but like most academic books, far too expensive to consider buying. Just by chance I put the title into Amazon a couple of nights ago and this was half price! And so was volume 2! (which is supposed to arrive on Friday).

It's still expensive - about £70.00 a volume - but I looked at the saving and not the outlay. Which is no doubt precisely what the algorithm predicted I'd do.

The colours are a bit off due to my phone and the artificial light conditions. The cover is closer to mulberry than the brownie seems to be here. And it's looking just a bit beaten up from its time in the warehouse. The packaging was inadequate but thankfully it didn't suffer any injuries, bumps or dings on its way to me.

134housefulofpaper
Fév 3, 2021, 5:52 pm



:)

135alaudacorax
Fév 3, 2021, 6:00 pm

A bit off the drift of the thread at the moment, but ...

Some AbeBooks sellers never cease to amaze me. I've just found about twenty, new, hardback copies of Green Tea and Other Strange Tales. All but one are around the £25 mark. And the other one? £1,508!

136housefulofpaper
Modifié : Fév 3, 2021, 6:08 pm

The subject crops up in the Fine Press Forums and Folio Society Devotees groups from time to time. I didn't follow the arguments too closely but I think it's either the perverse outcome of an automated pricing algorithm ("algorithm" is my word of the evening, evidently!), or sheer human wickedness, or the two working together somehow.

137LolaWalser
Fév 3, 2021, 7:47 pm

>135 alaudacorax:

It could be wise to check whether such a flurry of new hardcovers (or paperbacks for that matter) aren't Print-On-Demand.

>134 housefulofpaper:

Just admiring quietly the treasures in your recent posts...

138alaudacorax
Fév 3, 2021, 11:53 pm

>137 LolaWalser:

Not just print-on-demand. New editions of out-of-copyright books seem to be a bit of a minefield, these days, and there is some real rubbish out there.

139housefulofpaper
Fév 6, 2021, 6:05 pm

>133 housefulofpaper:

I should clarify that the covers are grey. I can confirm this, now I've seen them (volume II has arrived) in daylight.

140housefulofpaper
Fév 27, 2021, 8:51 pm

This week I had to move some boxes of paperbacks that have been crowded off my bookshelves, and I took the opportunity to look inside the boxes and take some pictures.

I tried to avoid including books I've already posted here.

The connections to the Gothic is admittedly tenuous for some of these, and sadly there's a sad lack of lurid 1970s covers here.

Peterley Harvest is sort of a literary hoax. It's really a novel, but was presented as the diary of a young man on the fringes of the British literary world during WWII. That said, it apparently includes genuine autobiographical elements including a visit to one of the elderly Arthur Machen's parties (including his infamous homemade punch) at his final home in Amersham.

some of these titles are too blurred to read, sorry about that I tried to get too many in the picture.





Alice in Wonderland has been incorporated into the corpus of modern Gothic, I suspect more for the look of Tenniel's illustrations, and the simple fact of being a product of the 19th Century, the anything Lewis Carroll wished to put into it. As you can see , the Alice-related book below is about the mathematics and the logic which is much more central to Carroll's work.

Darker Than You Think is a werewolf novel that I think was originally published in Unknown Magazine. At any rate it follows the magazine's editorial policy of treating the supernatural as, essentially, another kind of science - everything had to have a logical explanation within the world of the story with no room for spooky uncertainty, or examples of M. R. James' reported comment about the supernatural world, "we don't know the rules".


141housefulofpaper
Fév 27, 2021, 9:34 pm











L.T.C. Rolt was associated with Robert Aickman through the Inland Waterways Association and also wrote ghost stories. The Dain Curse includes a chapter which takes a supernatural turn but is (quickly) explained away in the Mrs Radcliffe/Scooby-Doo manner. The events focus on a fake church supposedly basing itself on Arthur Machen's ideas of an ancient Celtic church (called "Gaelic" here).

142housefulofpaper
Fév 27, 2021, 9:54 pm

Although this M R James volume has been superseded in Oxford World Classics by a complete edition (although there's a penumbra of borderline works than different collections may or may not include - unfinished stories, the short children's novel, the medieval ghost stories collected from his study of medieval manuscripts, etc) I think it has the best notes.





In the Holmes pastiche, he teams up with John Silence and Carnacki the Ghost Finder. The Historian is a Dracula novel of sorts. Actually, I had forgotten nearly everything about the story. I had to look at the Wikipedia entry to remind myself what happens in it. Charles Stross's book is part of a series about Len Deighton type espionage pitted against Lovecraftian horrors.

- P

143LolaWalser
Fév 27, 2021, 11:11 pm

Wonderful stuff. The familiar covers leap out at me; will have to pore over the rest a little longer.

144alaudacorax
Fév 28, 2021, 8:14 am

Wow.

>140 housefulofpaper:

By coincidence, I watched a documentary on the Voynich manuscript yesterday or the day before. I've forgotten where—probably YouTube. I've forgotten the names, but the general conclusion seemed to be that it was a hoax perpetrated on some king, who was known to be willing to spend large amounts on occult books and objects, by some chap who used to be an associate of John Dee (the Elizabethan one). Apparently he had form for this kind of thing.

Sad really, as, off and on, I've been waiting all my adult life (probably a bit longer) for someone to crack the code.

145housefulofpaper
Fév 28, 2021, 11:54 am

>144 alaudacorax:

It's a shame I don't have room to put all my books out on display (apologies to anyone for whom even a thin vertical slice of a crumbly, draughty, Victorian terrace is an unattainable dream) because seeing the titles doesn't just act as a memory-jog to the contents of the books, you can even find yourself making new connections between the various ideas and events that they contain.

Dee's associate would have been Edward Kelly (or Kelley), the one with the "scrying" ability in the partnership, I would guess. And the King was Rudolf II? Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). - Wikipedia.

I think the Voynich Manuscript,or perhaps the story of the Manuscript as much as the object itself, is always going to be strange and interesting, maybe even astonishing. Even if it was a hoax, the full story of "the caper" must include unlikely coincidences and - as with any high-stakes scam, high risk.

for one thing, presumably even the vellum alone would have required hundreds of animals and the skilled craftsmen to turn the skins into something that could be written on. I looked at the Wikipedia entry, to see if it gives the number of leaves in the book and how many skins that would convert to. Instead, I read that the vellum has been radiocarbon dated to the early 15th century, a hundred years before Dee or Kelly were born.

So unless Dee and Kelly, or Kelly alone, somehow acquired a huge and very valuable stack of vellum that had been prepared generations earlier but never used... (surely an insupportable sunk cost even for a wealthy Monastery or Royal palace..although the Holy Roman Emperor must have been very wealthy...now I'm imagining Kelly stealing the materials for making the Voynich Manuscript from Rudolf II, then selling it all back to him!)

Okay, but if that didn't happen, then Dee or Kelly/Kelly couldn't have written it. And then the question is, if not them then who, and why? And where was it for the first 100 and more years of its existence?

Admittedly that's all mystery of a different kind and the text and illustrations themselves may not have any secret meaning that can ever be decoded.

146alaudacorax
Mar 1, 2021, 6:50 am

>145 housefulofpaper:

Yes, definitely Kelley and Rudolf II.

I read the Wikipedia entry yesterday but I failed to pick on the significance of radiocarbon dating disparity. Stupid of me, really, as I distinctly remember reading the bit where it was argued that the radiocarbon dating effectively ruled out Voynich as the creator/hoaxer on the grounds that it was vanishingly unlikely that such a stock of vellum could have survived unused all those centuries.

And now I can't remember exactly what the documentary said. This is it, for what it's worth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGN5NApDy4

Oh, bloody hell! Check your facts before you post! When I posted >144 alaudacorax:, I'd completely forgotten the last ten minutes or so of the documentary. It goes into the radiocarbon business. I remember seeing it, but, in my defence, I think my mind was sidetracked at the time wondering if Dee & Kelley and Shakespeare knew each other. Some vague memory popped up of reading about some connection between Dee and Shakespeare's Prospero.

147alaudacorax
Mar 1, 2021, 7:01 am

>146 alaudacorax:

And it's quite a fascinating last ten minutes ...

148alaudacorax
Mar 1, 2021, 7:30 am

>144 alaudacorax:, >145 housefulofpaper:

I've just been looking at facsimiles on Amazon. I found this review. Um ...

I wished I hadn't wasted my money but was pleased to satisfy my curiosity about the content.

I liked looking through this good quality book but couldn't make head nor tail of it.


I'm quite baffled as to whether the reviewer is being humorous or not ...

149BillyDodd
Mar 1, 2021, 7:37 am

Cet utilisateur a été supprimé en tant que polluposteur.

150housefulofpaper
Mar 1, 2021, 6:57 pm

>146 alaudacorax:
Thanks for the link. I watched the documentary this evening. I realise I overestimated the amount of vellum that the book required. It's relatively small in size whereas I must have had in mind those huge early medieval Gospels and Psalters and so forth.

Alan Moore makes the Dee/Prospero connection in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (it's also a partial self-portrait, Prospero the bearded magician revealed to have been pulling the strings (writing the narrative) all along), but I don't imagine he was the first person to do so.

>148 alaudacorax:
Let's be generous, and interpret it as an attempt to give a helpful review through the pain of "buyer's remorse" :)

151alaudacorax
Mar 16, 2021, 11:50 am

>129 alaudacorax:

Weird situation:

I've discovered what I can only describe as an 'almost too good to be true' publisher, Chiltern Classics. Their books look really attractive and, as far as I can tell, really good quality—and only £20 from the publisher and much cheaper elsewhere. The website is rather poor, to be frank, and doesn't give you much of an idea of them, but have a look at this YouTube clip by 'Beautiful Books' (actually LT user 'skullduggery').

Here's the problem. I was actually looking for some nice copies of Jane Austen (having finally and ruefully accepted that I'm never really going to shell out the money for the full, leatherbound, Easton Press set) and I'm pretty sure that I've found them— the covers just look Jane Austen-ish, somehow—and I'm going to order Sense and Sensibility (current reading) to see what they look like in the hand, and, passing that, buy some more. But, when I look at the the Gothic volumes that may interest this group, everything changes. They have Dracula and Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskervilles and they have, to be fair, avoided the chintzyness for these, but they still don't look quite right to me. They have done darker and more dramatic designs—have a look at their The Art of War—so am I wrong to feel these three designs are a bit ... flat, unadventurous, inappropriate, not-one-thing-or-the-other? I'm really not sure; I've been staring at close-ups of the three I mentioned until my eyes are going funny ...

152alaudacorax
Mar 16, 2021, 12:04 pm

>151 alaudacorax:

It's probably something very personal, but their Jane Eyre looks just about right to me, while their Wuthering Heights looks altogether too cheery.

153alaudacorax
Mar 16, 2021, 1:10 pm

>151 alaudacorax:

... and just look at her bookshelves at the end of that video. Drool ...

154housefulofpaper
Modifié : Avr 26, 2021, 4:37 pm

>151 alaudacorax:
I think I agree with you about the Gothic covers, although I imagine they might have been a bit concerned about tipping over into kitsch. Looking at the books reminded me of something I haven't had to do since the concept of "smart casual" hit my place of work - namely, choose a nice tie!

I think the cover for The Little Prince worked best for me.

Here's a question though - with the dust jacket going from something many bookbuyers used to throw away to being highly prized, the book being incomplete without it, and "bellybands" fastened around a new book with a special advertising message going the same way, should you remove the sticker with the ISB and barcode on the back of the book, or leave it in place?

Edit: corrected "timing" to "tipping".

155alaudacorax
Mar 18, 2021, 4:37 am

>154 housefulofpaper:

Stone me! Don't tell me we have to keep the 'bellybands'!? I won't do it! I refuse!

156alaudacorax
Modifié : Mar 21, 2021, 7:03 am

>154 housefulofpaper:, >155 alaudacorax:

Word's Words failed me on the barcode sticker ...

Edited: Errant inverted comma—a near mortal sin in my family. Obviously really shaken by your post.

157housefulofpaper
Avr 26, 2021, 8:35 pm

Edgar Allan Poe/The Raven/Engravings by George Tute/The Folio Society 1995












This is a small book (115mm X 85mm), one of a series of seven that the Folio Society published in the 1990s.
The other books are not so Gothic but one includes ballads (including "The Demon Lover") and another is an edition of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

This book is printed on Japanese laid paper and is bound in full moire silk.

There are six engravings by George Tute incorporated into the text, plus a frontispiece and the endpaper designs.

158benbrainard8
Avr 27, 2021, 8:48 am

>157 housefulofpaper: Wow...that's simply beautiful. The pictures remind me of Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e).

159LolaWalser
Avr 27, 2021, 12:53 pm

The illustrations are a tad too literal for me (not bad, just not very inspired), but I really like the binding. So easy to picture raven's feathers gleaming in the same way.

160housefulofpaper
Avr 27, 2021, 8:40 pm

>159 LolaWalser:

The black silk/raven's wing visual echo hadn't registered with me. A bit dense of me, but in my defence this was the fifth book in the series, all with silk covers. And black is just the obvious colour for a Gothic poem, whether or not it takes a raven as its subject.

I do like the illustrations. I think it's partly the...tempted to say "texture"...that they have because they are wood engravings. The size works in their favour too, neat and like an ex libris or bookplate. Some of the photos are in >157 housefulofpaper: are larger than life size.

161housefulofpaper
Mai 3, 2021, 5:40 pm

More Edgar Allan Poe things, specifically poems, broadsides set and printed letterpress by US presses.

"The Conqueror Worm" from Pegana Press
One sheet, includes a Harry Clarke illustration. I've had this framed.





"The Haunted Palace" from Thornwillow Press.
Also one sheet, printed on one side only, but folded and folded again to make a 4-page booklet.
The opening two stanzas are omitted.





(Off topic, but possibly interesting, the cushions in the background are based on the old upholstery design in London Underground time trains).

162housefulofpaper
Modifié : Mai 4, 2021, 9:17 am

>161 housefulofpaper:
Edit - "Time trains"? Autocorrect clearly doesn't find real life exciting enough! I swear to you I wrote "tube trains" and that is where the upholstery design comes from!

163housefulofpaper
Mai 5, 2021, 3:19 pm

A little piece of ephemera from Thornwillow Press. And I found somewhere appropriate to display it (if you're familiar with Bagpuss).

164alaudacorax
Mai 6, 2021, 7:56 am

>163 housefulofpaper:

Why am I suddenly thinking of Lewis Carroll?

And did somebody write here somewhere about there being something a little strange about Bagpuss, connecting hime with folk horror, perhaps?

165housefulofpaper
Mai 6, 2021, 12:11 pm

>164 alaudacorax:

Are you unconsciously seeing a stoppered bottle with a "drink me" sign, perhaps?

I might have mentioned Bagpuss, I've certainly seen him grouped in with that "scary '70s childhood/folk horror" thing. But very recently - more recently than any mention I've made here - I saw some promotional artwork online that was pushing that line very hard for what I assumed was a forthcoming US DVD release. I was sure it was for Severin Kids (cult US label Severin has a new label for creepy old children's films!) but I can't find now. Maybe it was a dream, after all.

166LolaWalser
Mai 6, 2021, 3:39 pm

Very nice treasures and I like the pattern from the train upholstery. Is Bagpuss related to the Cheshire Cat?--I'm not placing him. But the name sounds dimly familiar...

Ah! just remembered something--so, I'm reading a book about artistic cabaret, and there's a chapter on the sole English (British?) representative establishment, The Cave of the Golden Calf (founded by August Strindberg's second ex-wife, Frida Strindberg)--and who do you think was on its committee--and, moreover, actually performed there on some occasions...?

Arthur Machen!

167housefulofpaper
Mai 6, 2021, 6:53 pm

>164 alaudacorax:

Also, somebody early last century came up with a solution to the riddle posed in - can't remember if it's in Wonderland or Looking Glass, - but the riddle was "why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

And the proposed solution was "because Poe wrote upon both", which is clever and fits, but has the downside of bringing a piece of real life into Carroll's fairyland. Although, as the Alice books have been absorbed into Goth culture, maybe it doesn't seem like a jarring collision of different worlds any more.

168housefulofpaper
Mai 6, 2021, 7:00 pm

>166 LolaWalser:

Bagpuss isn't much like the Cheshire Cat, but I suppose there's a slight resemblance to the Disney version. Thinking about it, amalgam of the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar would capture something of him. If such a thing as a "Mood Board" had existed in the early '70's, and had been allowed in Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's barn where they made their films, a few images from Alice would have been on there. There are a few conscious or unconscious echoes of Wonderland in Bagpuss.

169housefulofpaper
Mai 6, 2021, 7:33 pm

>166 LolaWalser:

There have been some mentions of The Cave of the Golden Calf in Faunus (the journal of The Friends of Arthur Machen) but focusing on his involvement and not much, as far as I can recall, about the cabaret itself. The articles speculate that Arthur may have been brought on board as a joke - a notably conservative middle-aged Victorian rather than the "flower tuniced high priest of Delirium" (not sure I've remembered the quote accurately, to be honest) of 1895. Whether that's true or not, I think a Vorticist poster for the cabaret was reproduced with one of the articles. I'll try to find it.

170LolaWalser
Mai 8, 2021, 6:46 pm

Ah, I returned the book already, I could have looked for some illustrations from it. The Cave of the Golden Calf lasted about two years (1912-1914?), and Machen, they write, did perform (recite/read) a few times. I too found it curious and therefore interesting for those same reasons you hint at, that he seems hardly the type.

But then it seems it was generally felt that the cabaret (as a genre and that specific locale) was not for nor of the English public at all--the writer mentions a critic coming out all shook up, writing that it's just not English and nothing in it is English... clearly for some tacitly decided-upon bourgeois and thoroughly xenophobic value of English.

The art, however, was by English (British) artists, Wyndham Lewis and, drat, forgot already... Gomer, Goner, Gore? Someone influenced by Gauguin, Fauve-ish in style.

Oh and there was a bas-relief by Eric Gill of a calf with a big dick (so pointed out in the text, don't blame me).

https://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_218880/Eric-Gill/Design-for-bas-relief...

The goings-on were apparently unbearably sulphurous, but I'm not sure if they asked a jaded Continental.

In any case... Machen!

171housefulofpaper
Mai 8, 2021, 7:57 pm

>170 LolaWalser:

Spencer Gore was the name of the artist. I must to confess to not knowing this, but I discovered it from The Cave of the Golden Calf's Wikipedia article (my "go-to"s to find out more about something are Wikipedia and YouTube...not the most rigorous meths of research but it's quick and sometimes a gem will be turned up).

This article also quotes Wilde's Last Stand, a book I have read (fascinating about the pushback against the permissive society 50 years avant la lettre with lots of interesting details of social history. I could recommend it just for the footnotes) and I'm annoyed with myself for not remembering that it mentions the cabaret.

And, the site of the cabaret is apparently visible on the cover of Ziggy Stardust. London is such a palimpsest though, that's maybe not such a surprise as at first it seems.

172alaudacorax
Mai 9, 2021, 6:29 am

>170 LolaWalser:, >171 housefulofpaper:

Dose of frustration this morning. The Cave of the Golden Calf sounds so intriguing, but is proving virtually impossible to find out anything about. I'm turning up lots of juicy details about Noel Pemberton Billing and Maud Allan but that place seems completely elusive. You'd think that, with it apparently being Britain's first and for a long time only ever cabaret club, someone would have done the research and written a book about it by now.

173alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 9, 2021, 6:31 am

Oops! Dublicate post.

ETA - Stone me! 'Duplicate'!!!

174pgmcc
Mai 9, 2021, 6:45 am

>173 alaudacorax:
New word for a replica Dublin perhaps?

175LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2021, 12:31 pm

>172 alaudacorax:

Well, I can at least give you the reference for Into the night : cabarets and clubs in modern art--each chapter is dedicated to a famous cabaret in a different city (Paris, Moscow, Vienna, Mexico City, Strasbourg, London etc.) and written by a different person. It's the catalogue for the exhibition that was at the Barbican, among some other places.

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/into-the-night-cabarets-clubs-in...

176housefulofpaper
Mai 9, 2021, 1:36 pm

>174 pgmcc:
Joycean!

>175 LolaWalser:
My ears pricked up at the mention of Strasourg. Looking up Strasbourg L’Aubette I find I was so close to it (the restored interior, that is) - a quick nose around the foyer of the building while on a shopping expedition. Which to be honest is on brand and about as demi monde as I ever get!

177LolaWalser
Mai 9, 2021, 1:46 pm

>176 housefulofpaper:

Oh, next time you must explore, that chapter was marvellous! That one and Moscow's Café Pittoresque were architecturally most out-there by far, in very different ways too. L'Aubette was sort of Bauhaus-y and geometric and you couldn't see everything the design and the colours did without taking in the whole. I wonder how much of that survives? The cabaret was just one part of the structure spread over four floors.

With the exception of the Chat Noir in Paris, all the other cabarets seemed to have lasted no longer than a couple of years on average, and some like the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire, only (five) months.

178alaudacorax
Mai 10, 2021, 4:39 am

>174 pgmcc:, >176 housefulofpaper: - Hah! (Still can't bring myself to use 'lol').

>175 LolaWalser: - Thanks for that, Lola.

179alaudacorax
Mai 10, 2021, 4:56 am

>177 LolaWalser:

Ah. Couldn't figure out for a while why 'Chat Noir' sounded so familiar. Turned to Wikipedia. That 'Tournée du Chat Noir' poster on there is/was on the wall of one of my holiday cottages. I assumed the elderly lady who owned the place had picked it up on her travels. Slightly disappointed to find you can pick them up on Amazon for four quid. Anyway, I said 'elderly', but she wasn't that old ...

180housefulofpaper
Mai 10, 2021, 6:37 pm


181alaudacorax
Mai 11, 2021, 7:00 am

>180 housefulofpaper:

There should be an emoji or some such thing for 'slightly crazed laughter'. It's darkly wonderful how this group can send me off down dark alleys and steal my time.

I looked at that photograph and my first thought was that there is no cat in Poe's Ligeia. That set me off on at least three-quarters of an hour reading the story, searching IMDb, Wikipedia and a bunch of random websites, realising my house is such an untidy mess that I can't find my copy of Rigby's English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema without some seriously heavy lifting, and finally realising what I should have assumed in the first place, that there is a cat because Corman or his script-writer wanted one.

Then I spent probably another three-quarters of an hour composing a post for this thread about my adventures. Then I scrapped it because it was rubbish. And essay-length.

Anyway, at least YouTube's provided me a copy of the film, which I'm fairly certain I've never seen before (picture quality doesn't look too grand). I'm tempted to write that I've made a new resolution to tidy up this place and fit in as many bookcases as I possibly can; but I'd have to, in shame-faced honesty, add 'yet again ...' to the end. Perhaps I'll make a start after lunch ...

182pgmcc
Mai 11, 2021, 8:07 am

>181 alaudacorax:
In the past year I have added eight new bookcases and am at the "yet again..." stage. If only I had more wall space.

By the way, the "eight new bookcases" were an addition to the original fifteen. This excludes the bookcase used for DVDs and other non-book items.

183alaudacorax
Mai 11, 2021, 8:11 am

>182 pgmcc:

Twenty-three bookcases! Yep, I'm not trying hard enough.

184pgmcc
Mai 11, 2021, 8:20 am

>183 alaudacorax: I have not counted the narrow (20cm) bookcases I use for CDs and DVDs, and I forgot to include the bookcase on my wife's side of the bed that holds books.

I hasten to add, the several of the bookcases contain my wife's books. I think it is four.

:-)

185housefulofpaper
Mai 11, 2021, 8:21 pm

I've got 11 bookcases plus the repurposed shelving from my teenage bedroom now in the loft, equal to at least two more cases. Books crammed unceremoniously into the fitted wardrobe in my bedroom (inherited when I bought the house), and the rest, sad to say, are in boxes.

186benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 11, 2021, 10:19 pm

Sigh, I feel like the complete amateur--- with a whopping two book shelves/cases and one cabinet shelve that holds art/photographic books that are too large for the other two.

I can't imagine that many bookcases, how do you clean them ? Can you reach the tops of them to clean/dust? Can the flooring hold that much weight ?

Wow!!!!!!

187housefulofpaper
Mai 12, 2021, 8:30 pm

>186 benbrainard8:

I need to be careful with the stuff stowed in the loft. The joists aren't designed to be load bearing and the space wasn't used for storage for the first 100 years of the house's life. I was the first owner to have have some boards put down. The flooring in the rest of the house should be fine.

I have good intentions of a regular regime of checking, cleaning all the books on open shelves but it hasn't been as easy as I'd hoped/expected. I have dehumidifiers going if the relative humidity is above 50%, and they're also fitted with HEPA filters. So the hope is any dust and spores and things that settle will be inert, or inert for longer than otherwise.

I've got a light aluminium (British English spelling!) stepladder to reach the upper shelves. It's a bit of a sore point; I'd fancied the idea of one of those library chairs that convert to steps but family members prevailed on me to go for a cheap alternative. And then of course the steps were borrowed and now have the customary paint and plaster all over them.

188LolaWalser
Mai 12, 2021, 10:03 pm

>181 alaudacorax:

Pity about the picture quality, Ligeia is one of the better Corman's movies, IMO (and a favourite). I don't have it because the last I looked whatever was available was crazily priced; time for another looksee...

>187 housefulofpaper:

Dusting's a big problem for me too. The topmost rows of the books are almost 14 feet up but I made an effort at least to range the ones in slipcases up there, preferentially...

Need a better (taller) stepladder too. Unfortunately I don't do well with heights.

189benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 13, 2021, 11:10 am

Thank you for telling me how you care for your books.

I could see where an older house might having flooring that needs reinforcing somehow (?)

We have a Dyson that has HEPA filter in our little den, where the book shelves are. I should check if it also works as a dehumidifier.

I have "Romantic view" of the types of shelving I see in movies where someone has a large ladder that moves smoothly around the shelves (track system), but that's probably not realistic, or those might be more library...features.

Only thing I can think of for dusting items that are up high...they now make those "dust mops" that have extensions and you can reach up to 20-30 ft. with them. But that would still be a limited manner of dusting. Heh, someone should devise a drone that has a camera and cleaning implements...

My own are in my LT photos, so you can see, the two I've got are beautiful, my wife's gift to me. But I'd love to have the type of book room/library room that you all are describing.

Do you keep "reading stations" nearby? A reading chair with side table/lamps, maybe a tray for coffee/tea/drink ?

Best !

190housefulofpaper
Mai 14, 2021, 8:32 pm

>189 benbrainard8:

I don't imagine your Dyson can also perform as a dehumidifier. The technologies involved are quite different. The models I have pull air over spinning wheels with fins or paddles, and moisture condenses on the paddles and drops into a receptacle, and drier air comes out.

I still have romantic ideals about what my library should be, but between economic reality, day-to-day practicalities of needing to use flat surfaces for things other than books, and my acquisitive rather than discerning book buying habits, those ideals get severely compromised!

I've acquired two comfortable armchairs, cast off from family members, which have defaulted to the reading stations as well as being just my furniture (and in one case also my office chair for the past 14 months). Reading lamps have become a necessity as I get older. There is a coffee table nearby for tea or coffee, or something stronger.

191benbrainard8
Modifié : Mai 15, 2021, 11:01 am

>190 housefulofpaper: I think you're right, it appears the two Dysons we have work more as fans and air filters (HEPA). NW USA is odd place, because even though it rains quite a bit the air itself is rather...dry and there's very low humidity.

We've had conversations about doing built-in-book shelving, but the costs would be astronomical. So my only solutions are to do more book donations, use library, and someday, will fall for a Kindle or Kindle-like device.

I love sitting in what I call my "swirl chair", which is a large comfy chair, turning on reading lamp, drinking coffee, and reading....

We should do a "drunken or tipsy" reading thread someday and since I don't normally drink, perhaps I'll sip a small whisky while re-reading The Shining.

192alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 16, 2021, 1:27 pm

Wrong thread. Moved it

193alaudacorax
Modifié : Mai 16, 2021, 1:28 pm

Wrong thread. Moved it.

194housefulofpaper
Mai 19, 2021, 8:21 pm

>191 benbrainard8:

I'm not clear on what a drunken reading thread would be. Is it trying to do a real-time review while you get more and more intoxicated? My ability to organise my thoughts and my typing skills are already pretty poor while I'm sober...

Or matching drinks to authors/works, I suppose William Hope Hodgeson's nautical horror would pair well with Adnam's Ghost Ship pale ale, or Kraken rum.