James Machin - Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939

This series of Gothic books is the first to treat the genre in its many inter-related, global and extended cultural aspects to show how the taste for the medieval and the sublime gave rise to a perverse taste for terror and horror and how that taste became not only international (with a huge fan base in places such as South Korea and Japan) but also the sensibility of the modern age, changing our attitudes to such diverse areas as the nature of the artist, the meaning of drug abuse and the concept of the self. The series is accessible but scholarly, with referencing kept to a minimum and theory contextualised where possible. All the books are readable by an intelligent student or a knowledgeable general reader interested in the subject.

Editorial Board:

Dr Ian Conrich, University of South Australia

Barry Forshaw, author/journalist, UK

Professor Gregg Kucich, University of Notre Dame, USA

Professor Gina Wisker, University of Brighton, UK

Dr Catherine Wynne, University of Hull, UK

Dr Alison Peirse, University of Yorkshire, UK

Dr Sorcha N Fhlainn, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Professor William Hughes, Bath Spa University, UK

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14698

Cover illustration: PAINTING / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In researching and writing this book Ive relied on the expertise and generous support of numerous people who are nevertheless not responsible for any of its defects. I am particularly grateful to Roger Luckhurst for supervising the PhD thesis from which this book has emerged. The wellsprings of his insight, knowledge, and benevolence seem bafflingly inexhaustible. Thanks to the Birkbeck School of Arts for sustaining such an inspiring and supportive research community. The feedback, encouragement, and guidance offered by Nick Freeman and Adam Roberts, who examined the thesis, has doubtless improved the resulting book no end. I am also very grateful to the readers of the MS for Palgrave, who gave me valuable pushes and nudges in various directions. Thanks of course to Timothy J. Jarvis for the ongoing conversation on all things weird, a conversation that has shaped this book immeasurably. My sincerest appreciation to Clive Bloom for green-lighting the book for the Palgrave Gothic series and steering it into existence. Myriad and diverse thanks also owed to: Michael J. Abolafia, the late great Harold Billings, Godfrey Brangham, John Clute, Douglas Cowie, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Eaglestone, Emily Fergus, Christine Ferguson, Gwilym Games, Sebastian Groes, Matthew Harle, Hallvard Haug, Kenneth Hillier, James D. Jenkins, Michael Jonik, S. T. Joshi, Rob Latham, Kate Macdonald, Johnny Mains, Cato Marks, David McAllister, Rosalie Parker, Mark Pilkington, Jon Preece, Michael Redley, Ray Russell, Brian J. Showers, Andrew Smith, David Tibet, Mark Valentine, Jeff VanderMeer, Sherryl Vint, Rick Watson, and Aaron Worth. Sincere apologies if youre one of the countless people Ive pestered on this subject over the last few years and Ive omitted you from this list. Thank you to Lina Aboujieb and Ellie Freedman at Palgrave for guiding me through the publication process with such kind efficiency.

This book was made possible by grants awarded by the Robert Gavron Charitable Trust and Birkbeck School of Arts, so I would particularly like to thank Kate Gavron and Carol Watts respectively. It greatly saddens me that due to Lord Gavrons death in 2015 I am unable to write to him to inform him of the publication of this book and thank him again for his incredible generosity. I am very grateful to both the Harry Ransom Center and Science Fiction Studies (R. D. Mullen Fellowship) for research grants that enabled travel to archives in Texas and California, and also to the staff at the Ransom Center and the Eaton Collection, University of California Riverside, for being uniformly generous with their expertise and hospitality.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my mother Carole, my sisters Becca, Miriam, and Katie, to John Hamilton-Brown, and to Adrian and Judith Jones. I would like to offer innumerable thanks to my wife Lucy Jones. Although she has never troubled to disguise her disdain for my goblin books, there is no conceivable way I could have undertaken this work without her unstinting patience and support. For this and much else besides, I will be ever grateful. Finally, I would like to thank my son, Arthur, whose birth in 2014 didnt in the end derail my research too much, and who has been a source of boundless joy ever since. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Noel Machin.

Chapter

Previous versions of some of the material in Chapter have appeared in an article published in Wormwood 24, Spring 2015 (A Surge of Daemonic Energy: John Buchan and The Dancing Floor ), and my introduction to the Valancourt 2017 edition of C. F. Kearys Twixt Dog and Wolf . The extracts from holdings of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, are used with its kind permission. I am very grateful to the Center, as well as the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin Office of Graduate Studies for supporting my visiting fellowship there in 2014.