A Seventh Child ~ John Strange Winter ~ New Edition

I am very pleased to announce that A Seventh Child: A Novel by John Strange Winter (aka Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Stannard), originally published in 1894, is now available in a lovely new edition, and it includes a long biographical essay by me entitled 'John Strange Winter: Author, Wife, Mother & Purveyor of Toilet Preparations’. 

It seemed very fitting that this should be the book I worked on after Through the Night: Tales of Shades and Shadows by Isabella Banks; Henrietta and Isabella were good friends. 

I wrote a post about the stories in this collection back in 2016, and you can read it by clicking here.

You can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press by clicking here. Or you can pre-order it from the usual online retailers (for Amazon UK, click here) or from your local bricks-and-mortar bookshop.

Anyway, here's the publisher blurb and all that: 

Nancy Reynard is the youngest of seven children. She is the seventh child of a seventh child. In fact, as both of her parents are seventh children, she is a seventh child twice over. She is the daughter of Colonel Septimus Reynard and his wife Blanche, and she lives very happily with her family at the Warren in Minchester until she reaches the age of ten, when she discovers that she has the gift of second sight; unfortunately, it is more of a nuisance and inconvenience for poor Nancy. She starts ‘seeing’ things, in particular things about her sister Blanche's new fiancé, and blurting them out for all and sundry to hear, much to his annoyance. And so begins Nancy’s career as a reluctant psychic detective. And now, no liar, thief or murderer is safe when she is near… or thousands of miles away.

Nancy is one of the earliest fictional psychic detectives, and she is unusual in being female and, when her gift makes its first appearance at least, just a child. A Seventh Child was first published in 1894. John Strange Winter was the pen name of the Victorian writer Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Stannard. This new edition includes an introductory essay by Gina R. Collia: 'John Strange Winter: Author, Wife, Mother & Purveyor of Toilet Preparations’.. (Publisher website: Click here)

Nezu Press, 29 September 2023. 

ISBN-13: 978-1-7393921-4-7.  

Hardback with dust jacket, 246 pages.

The new Nezu Press edition of A Seventh Child alongside the original first edition. And a large photographic portrait of the author John Strange Winter (Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Stannard) by Herbert R. Barraud.

The Darling Fishes ~ Rick Ferreira

Last time I wrote about Rick Ferreira (click here to read that post), and today it's the turn of The Darling Fishes: And Other Tales of Fantasy, Horror and the Supernatural, his collection of stories published by William Kimber in 1977. It contains 17 tales of varying length, some quite short.

In the first story in the collection, 'The Darling Fishes', young Sally Brewster is a daddy's girl. She has a luxury flat, plenty of money in the bank and a mink coat. But she also has insomnia and a 'daddy' who she finds repulsive. While out for dinner with him, she is drawn to a large tank of tropical fish; watching them she feels relaxed and, for the first time in weeks, sleepy. She returns home determined to be rid of her 'daddy' and to have a tank of her own. She orders a six-foot aquarium full of darling fishes that will help her to sleep. Brightly-coloured, beautiful, exciting, mesmerising, darling fishes... at least one of every variety... even the hungry ones that definitely can't live together.

In 'Crusoe's Parrot', Robin Selkirk, who is mourning the death of his father, is on holiday with his mother on the island of Tobago. Robin’s in the shower when he sees the ghost of Crusoe’s parrot for the first time. The comical parrot is only visible to the lonely and unhappy, and when he leaves them they are lonely and unhappy no more.

In 'Pools of Darkness', Mrs Whirely wins one hundred thousand pounds on the Pools. But there’s a catch; she’s won it on the D-Plan… and D for Darkness.

In 'Helping Hand', rugby player Cliff Anderson has lost his right arm—it was amputated after a car accident—but he can still feel it, and it hurts… ‘it’s like a thin very cold knife thrust into the muscles… thrust in then turned.’ At least, it hurts until he begins to use it again.

Alice, in 'Alice Through a Halo', is four years old and has been given a part in her kindergarten’s nativity play. She’s to be an angel, but artificial wings won’t do; she wants real wings—size number four— so she can fly away.

'The Royal Ones' are Princess Ti-SuSu and Majesty, her cat. Ti-SuSu is the wife of a king, but she shares him with a hundred other wives. She is determined, however, that his heir will be her son and no other’s, so the child born to Princess Bin-Sio must be killed. And Ti-SuSu makes Majesty, the killer, a promise: if he is caught and destroyed, he will live again and they will be reunited.

In 'The Sacrifice', David Thomas recounts a tale from his time as an Inspector of Police in Georgetown in the Crown Colony of British Guiana, now Guyana. He was called in to prevent old Icaro, a chief of one of the Arawak tribes who had volunteered himself as a human sacrifice, going over the Kaieteur Falls. The problem was that David had just shaved off his beard, and the Arawaks never listened to a beardless man, so a false beard had to do… Except it didn’t do, not one bit.

The 'Portrait of Rosana’ was owned by the Baroncelli family for almost four hundred years. Then it was sold, and the rich American who bought it in Rome was dead twenty-four hours later. Sally Shrimpton, a famous actress, buys the painting for her husband’s birthday… the portrait of a murderess long dead... dead but not quite finished with all that murdering.

'Gone Is the Ginger-Haired Negress' is the longest story in the collection. Norman Sulnick has let out the attic bedsitter in his house to James Fenmoore Braithwaite, a black chap from Guyana, much to the disgust of his elderly mother. While Norman indulges in sexual fantasies about his lodger, James Braithwaite is too busy trying to escape his dead wife, Mathilda, the black Queen of Obeah. She’s told him to stop writing about her in his journal, and she’s not about to let him get away with defying her.

In 'Neat Justice', Pam dumps Alexander because he is too neat. She likes her messy flat and wants rid of his need for everything to be tidy. Alexander's reaction proves that it is possible to be too neat for your own good.

In 'Twice to the Grave We Go!', Ruth Drayton receives a letter from Smithson, Frank and Foley, solicitors, requesting her presence at their offices on Friday 12 July at 3pm. Now happily married, she was once engaged to Charles Edward Granger, who left her standing at the altar and went on to become a property tycoon. Granger, dead for the past six months, left an unusual recording for her to listen to.

In 'Kaituk', five-year-old Timothy Leighton has a friend; Kaituk is a South American Indian boy from the forest country of Guyana, and he’s always stark naked. The boys meet on Hampstead Heath, and Timothy's mother is convinced that Kaituk is imaginary.

'The Last Course' is that of Charles and Sheila’s anniversary dinner. Charles, Sheila and their friend Geoffrey were supposed to spend the evening together to celebrate, but Geoffrey is unable to attend.

In 'When Did You Last See a Witch?', Alice, Gertrude and Florence are three elderly, retired, incredibly bored witches. Alice suggests opening a coffee bar, and The Witches’ Brew comes into being. But a nice new coffee bar needs pretty young waitresses, so they run it disguised as Diana Dors, Kim Novak and Hedy Lamarr. But the rushing about, the constant flood of admiring male customers, the whistles and the groping hands prove to be too much for them.

'Don't Stop the Snowing' details the doings of fifteen-year-old Joshua William Hartley, who wakes up during the ‘Great Freeze’ of 1962 to find that he's turned invisible.

'The Girl From Tamango' is Lily Carew, and she's missing. She never returned from her visit to Turk Island with the scriptwriter Sinclair... the island of dead coconuts, slimy green water and carrion crabs as large as turtles.

In 'Summer and Miss Swanson', Mr Fairley is looking for lodgings and goes to view an attic flat on Hampstead Heath. But the previous tenant, Miss Swanson, hasn’t actually moved out.

As I mentioned before, the tales are of varying length; 'Portrait of Rosana’ is just three and a half pages long. They're also quite different from one another, and some work better than others. 'When Did You Last See a Witch?' is quite funny, whereas 'Summer and Miss Swanson' is quite sad. The best, for me, were 'The Darling Fishes', 'The Sacrifice', 'Gone Is the Ginger-Haired Negress' and 'The Girl From Tamango'. 

There are comments made by characters within these stories that will make you pause.. comments about race. Don't forget, as I mentioned in my last post, the writer was a white West Indian who was aware of, and uncomfortable about, the advantage his skin colour gave him over fellow countrymen who were black. It's hard to imagine now that it was once quite normal to think that having a black lodger was scandalous. Mind you, when my mother was a teenager, having any sort of foreign boyfriend was likely to get nets twitching and eyebrows climbing up foreheads. My grandfather was Romani, and he was full of tales of vicars telling him to bugger off from their door if he didn't want the police called. Yes, times have changed... But they do still have a way to go.