Book News ~ Out of the Ages by Devereux Pryce

I am very pleased to announce that the first Nezu Press title of 2025 will be Out of the Ages by Devereux Pryce, an extremely rare novel that hasn't been republished since it first appeared in 1923. Devereux Pryce was the nom de plume of Sir Gerard Albert Muntz, and Out of the Ages was his only published work of fiction.

I know, it's unusual for Nezu Press to publish a chap. But the first book of last year was by a fellow, and I think we may make January the month of exceptions.

So, shall I tell you what it's about then? Well, I did write a blog post about it a while back, so you can read my review by clicking here. And here's the blurb:

Thira Colquhoun is a rich, beautiful, married woman who is very used to having her way; Jack Winthrop is the man she wants to have her way with, and Janet Baxter is the woman unfortunate enough to stand in her way. When Jack takes a job in Purnam, on the other side of the world, Thira is determined to follow him. So she and her unsuspecting husband, along with a group of friends, embark on a long voyage east, heading across the Mediterranean to Egypt, then sailing down the Red Sea and along the African coast to Purnam. While cruising along the Nile, the Colquhouns encounter a French archaeologist who invites them to visit a recently excavated tomb. It contains the remains of King Amenhotep’s favourite, a priestess who was suffocated to death by a group of priests. And one of the Colquhoun party does exactly what you should never do when you visit the final resting place of a murdered Egyptian… she removes an ancient cylinder from the tomb as a keepsake… with inevitably disastrous results. 

This new edition includes a biographical essay by me: ‘Gerard Albert Muntz: The Renowned Metallurgist Who Had Never Been to Egypt’

Published: 25 January 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-06-9.
Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 284 pages.

I have a thing for Egypt; I have had ever since I visited the Egyptian department of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (I must have been about nine years old at the time). I was fascinated by the museum's model of Abu Simbel and one of their sarcophagi (there was a little corner missing at the foot, and I was always trying to see inside). Anyway, I've gone off at a tangent there.  If you think the image on the cover seems familiar, that's because it probably is; it's by David Roberts.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores. It is already at Amazon UK (please click here) and US (please click here).

Vanity's Price ~ E. Yolland

I am pleased to announce that the final Nezu Press title of 2024 will be Vanity's Price by E. Yolland. This new edition of the novel—its first republication since it first appeared in 1900—includes the essay ‘In Search of E. Yolland’ (by me), which originally appeared in Mistress Bridget (Nezu Press, 2023).

So, what's it all about... Alfie?

According to family legend, in every generation of the Ainslie family one child is born heartless, ‘in sad and bitter memory of a beautiful ancestress’ who ‘played fast and loose with men’s hearts’ and so neglected her baby daughter that the poor infant died.

Clarice Ainslie is utterly heartless; she cares for nobody but herself. She is also terrified of everything old and determined to remain young forever, so she agrees to become the guinea pig for Dr Head’s ‘Arrested Age’ experimental treatment. Far from being put off by the extremely high financial cost of the treatment, the doctor’s frank description of what she will have to endure—including the removal of all her teeth and virtual imprisonment within his home—or the length of time it will take to complete the process, Clarice forges ahead without giving any of it much thought. But there is a price to pay for such obsessive vanity… and it is a high one.

According to The Graphic (September 1900)...‘The novel contains many excellent morals, concerning the vanity of Vanity, the expediency of kindness to dumb animals, the inexpediency of joining murder-societies, the imprudence of trusting to quacks, and the folly of being born without brains.’

Published: 20 November 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-917113-05-2.
Case laminate hardback, 22.86mm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 176 pages.

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores. It is already at Amazon UK (please click here) and US (please click here).

The new Nezu Press edition alongside the original first edition of 1900.

By the Night Express and Other Tales, etc. ~ Keith Fleming

I am extremely pleased—and that is a huge understatement—to announce that on the spookiest day of the year Nezu Press will publish two volumes of stories by Keith Fleming (pseudonym of female author K. E. Fitz-Patrick). And both will include my 21-page biographical essay—‘Most Unassuming in Demeanour’: The Life of K. E. Fitz-Patrick—which reveals a large amount of new information about the writer’s background and life.

   

Until now, next to nothing was known about Miss Fitz-Patrick. When I first began looking for information about her, I had very little to go on. I thought I might find a few choice morsels to shed a little light on her life, but I didn't dare hope for more than that—I certainly wasn't expecting what I did find. And now you can read all about her.

The stories contained in the two volumes are as follows:

By the Night Express and Other Tales:

The novellas ‘By the Night Express’, ‘Dolores’, and ‘Love Stronger than Death’. 

The novel “Can Such Things Be?”.

The short stories ‘So Innocent’, ‘The Transfiguration of Lettice Willoughby’, and ‘The Red Skirt’.

At the Eleventh Hour and Other Tales:

The novels At the Eleventh Hour and The Sins of the Fathers.

The short stories ‘The Courage of Kathie’, ‘An Audacious Wager’, and ‘Garth Austin’s Strategy’.

And the dust jacket of each volume features a wonderful painting by Edward Miller (Les Edwards), of whom I have been a great fan since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

The sensation novel The Sins of the Fathers (which does have supernatural elements) was originally published in instalments in various newspapers from 1893; it was never published in book form, and it has never been republished in any format. All six short stories appeared in periodicals, and none of them have been republished before (I should point out that the short stories are not supernatural).

Both books are available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (By the Night Express | At the Eleventh Hour). Alternatively, they are available from the usual online retailers, and you can order them from bricks-and-mortar stores. They're already at Amazon UK (click here: By the Night Express | At the Eleventh Hour).

The Uncanny House & The Forsaken House at Misty Vale ~ Mary L. Pendered

Nezu Press is bringing out two books in August, both by Mary L. Pendered. A well-known author during her lifetime, she has been almost forgotten since her death, and her books are extremely difficult to get hold of. One of our new titles, The Forsaken House at Misty Vale, is so rare that you're unlikely to ever see a copy of the first edition in the wild.

The Uncanny House was first published in 1927, and The Forsaken House at Misty Vale came out in 1932. Neither of these novels has been republished since its first publication. Please note that both of the new Nezu Press editions contain the same 20-page biographical essay by me: ‘Mary L. Pendered: Author, Suffragist, Pacifist, and Thoroughly Good Woman’.

The Uncanny House

Old Mr Barker was a curmudgeon who underfed his dogs to make them vicious and kept his low-paid staff loyal with promises of legacies that never materialised. Following his death, his home is sold at auction for an absurdly cheap price to Peggy and Percy Dacre. But when the young couple move into their new home with their four children, Peggy soon discovers that The Beeches—commonly referred to as ‘Hell Corner’ by the locals—is already occupied.

Published: 20 August 2024.
978-1-917113-01-4.
Hardback with dust jacket, 228 pages.
Click here to buy from Nezu Press.

The Forsaken House at Misty Vale

Celia Grey, a fifty-year-old, unmarried writer who has longed for a home of her own for decades, thinks all her prayers have been answered when she inherits her uncle’s house. But Clew Lodge is a property with an uncanny reputation. It is a grim and daunting place, desolate and derelict, having been left to the forces of corruption since Uncle Jerrold abandoned it a decade prior to his death—because he ‘could not stand the whispering’.

Published: 20 August 2024.
978-1-917113-02-1.
Hardback with dust jacket, 306 pages.
Click here to buy from Nezu Press.

Both books will be available from the usual online retailers soon. They are available to pre-order from the Nezu Press website right now (see links above).

Over the Cliffs ~ Charlotte Chanter

As promised, here is the third of today's announcements (you can read the first one by clicking here and the second one by clicking here).

On 4 May, to accompany the release of two works by Gratiana Chanter, Nezu Press will publish a hardback edition of Over the Cliffs by Gratiana's mother, Charlotte Chanter, with a biographical essay by me. 

Here are the details:

Charlotte Chanter is best known as the author of Ferny Combes, a guide to collecting and identifying the ferns of Devonshire. Her only fiction novel, Over the Cliffs, was first published in two volumes by Smith, Elder and Co. in the autumn of 1860. The story is set on the coast of Devon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is a tale of murder, a stolen inheritance, smuggling, shipwrecks, blackmail, treachery, greed, plotting, counter-plotting… and love. There is even a hint of the supernatural in the form of a sighing ghost. Its fearless heroine is Gratiana Dawson, the daughter of a brutal bully who hates his children and is prone to violent paroxysms of passion. Motherless, forced to live under the roof of a tyrant, and the victim of one indignity after another, Gratiana refuses to surrender to the abusive men around her. Edward Mountjoy, the hero of the story, says of her, when speaking to Captain Douglas of the Royal Navy, ‘She has done things in her day that required from her more nerve than would be required of you in attacking an enemy.’ This edition includes a detailed biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, ‘Charlotte Chanter: Fearless Fern-Hunter of Devonshire’.

As with her daughter Gratiana, I'm going to be posting much more about this Devonshire writer in the days and weeks to come.

You can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press (Publisher shop: Click here). Or you can do so from the usual online retailers; the book will be showing up in all the usual places soon.

Nezu Press, 4 May 2024.
978-1-917113-00-7.
Hardback with dust jacket, 460 pages.

Trebetherick ~ Gratiana Chanter

As promised, here is the second of today's announcements (you can read the first one by clicking here).

On 4 May, to accompany the release of The Witch of Withyford, Nezu Press will publish a hardback edition of Trebetherick, also by Gratiana Chanter, with a long biographical essay by me. 

As I said before, I'm definitely going to be posting much more about this Devonshire writer, and her mother (whose book is the subject of my next announcement), in the days and weeks to come.

Here are the details:

Gratiana Chanter’s novel Trebetherick, a tale of shipwrecks, wreckers, hidden treasure, abducted maidens, murder and other evil doings, was first published in 1913 by Francesco Giannini & Figli of Naples. The story is told from the perspective of David Rounsevall of Trebetherick in the Parish of St. Enodoc, Cornwall, and begins the night he first hears ghostly Tregeagle howl during a ferocious storm. This edition includes a detailed biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, ‘Gratiana Chanter: A Typical Daughter of Devon’.

You can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press (Publisher shop: Click here). Or you can do so from the usual online retailers; the book will be showing up in all the usual places soon.

Nezu Press, 4 May 2024.
978-1-7393921-9-2.
Hardback with dust jacket, 210 pages.

The Witch of Withyford ~ Gratiana Chanter

I have three book announcements to make today, and I'm going to split them up into three separate posts; otherwise this will be a huge one (not that size matters, or so I'm told, but, well... you'll get tired part way through and give up reading... or the will to live). So, here's announcement no.1:

On 4 May, Nezu Press will release a new hardback edition of The Witch of Withyford by Gratiana Chanter, with a long biographical essay by me. Now, as you know, I'm always excited about working on a new book, but this one—in fact, all of the titles I'm announcing today—are of particular interest to me because the writers were North Devon lasses. In fact, just like me, they called Ilfracombe home. Gratiana was the daughter of John Mill Chanter, the vicar of Ilfracombe for fifty-one years.

Anyway, here are the details:

Gratiana Chanter’s novella The Witch of Withyford: A Story of Exmoor, containing her own illustrations, was first published by J. M. Dent & Co. in May 1896. In it, Nance Darvel, a gruesome woman who lives in a hovel, is intent on punishing a slight by destroying the life of the local squire. It is an uncanny tale of witchcraft, superstition, child-theft and revenge, set in Gratiana’s beloved Devonshire and told by an elderly servant of Withyford Grange. This current edition includes three other tales: ‘The Appledore Boy’, ‘The Shadowy Hillside’, and ‘The Forty Thieves of Exmoor’. It also includes all of the author’s illustrations for the first edition and a detailed biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, ‘Gratiana Chanter: A Typical Daughter of Devon’.

I'm definitely going to be posting more about this writer in the days/weeks to come, but for now I'll just say that you can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press (Publisher shop: Click here). Or you can do so from the usual online retailers; the book will be showing up in all the usual places soon.

Nezu Press, 4 May 2024.
978-1-7393921-8-5.
Case laminate hardback, 170 pages.

The Other End ~ A Rambler's Perspective

The Other End by R. Ellis Roberts is one of my favourite collections. I was thinking recently about my own reactions to the stories—to be precise, I was doing this while walking in the middle of nowhere in the dark—and I came to the conclusion that people who like wandering about the remote countryside frequently, especially in the dark, will most likely react differently to the stories in this collection than those who don't. Whilst only two of the tales are set almost entirely outdoors—'The Hill' and 'The Rabbit Road'—most of them have some part of their action taking place outside, where location and atmosphere are all important.

Even at night and in a remote location, a feeling of safety comes from having intimate knowledge of a path. Familiarity with a route, and the various trees and other object along it, gives a sense of sureness that is absent in an unknown environment. Walkers know this—we’re used to striding along at a decent pace in a place we know well—even in complete darkness—as opposed to stumbling along in one we don’t know at all, where every nearby sound or unusual shadowy shape brings with it a sense of unease. The same can be said, to a lesser extent, in full daylight and sunshine; I’m thinking of the film And Soon the Darkness, which terrified me the first time I watched it (and still does, in fact).

There are vast areas of the planet that contain no human life. But you don't have to go to one of those to feel isolated, unwelcome or threatened... or that you've stepped into a place that doesn't quite belong in the reality you're used to and comfortable with. I've wandered off track enough times to know what it feels like when you trespass into an area where you don't belong. I don't mean that it's private land that belongs to an irate farmer; I'm talking about a place, or something within it, not welcoming my human presence. There's an atmosphere about some locations; the strangeness of them is right—it's real—and it's the presence of a human being that is somehow wrong and odd. And the stories in  The Other End are full of that atmosphere; a place or event is strange, threatening... other... but somehow totally real and accepted without question. And that's what makes it all the more unsettling. As one reviewer wrote, when The Other End was published in 1923, the effectiveness of the stories rests 'on the sense of the vital reality of these unrecognised powers, whose presence seems, indeed, less an intrusion upon our world than upon theirs.'

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while walking in the woods, in the dark, in the night: that The Other End may be especially suited to ramblers. I just thought I'd share my thoughts with you today, which just happens to be the publication day of the new Nezu Press edition. Oh, and happy Valentine's Day!

PS—If you'd like to buy a copy from Nezu Press, click here.

The Other End ~ R. Ellis Roberts

While it's true that I generally spend a lot of time researching lady writers, I do very much like the gentlemen too. And I am extremely pleased to announce that on 14 February Nezu Press will release a new hardback edition of a book I am very fond of: The Other End by R. Ellis Roberts. 

In his day, R. Ellis Roberts was a well-known literary critic and writer. He contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals, including the Daily News, Observer, Empire Review, London Mercury, Bookman, Saturday Review, and Guardian. He was literary editor for the New Statesman and Time and Tide, and he hosted a book review programme for BBC Radio. In 1923, his only collection of uncanny short stories, The Other End, was published by Cecil Palmer and received glowing reviews. The critic for the Bookman declared the author ‘as well able to write stories of his own as to criticise those of others’, having achieved a mastery of his subject that at times ‘challenges comparison with Poe and Hawthorne’. And Gerald Gould, in the Saturday Review, suggested that no nervous person should read the book when ‘alone at night in a remote cottage on a lonely moor’. 

And yet, these days he's pretty much forgotten. I really can't understand why nobody's brought out a new edition of his collection of uncanny tales before; they're so good. But then, so many writers are chucked by the wayside once they kick the bucket. It's very sad.

Anyway, this new edition of The Other End, along with the contents of the first edition, includes four reviews written by R. Ellis Roberts about the work of Arthur Machen, of whom he was an admirer. The reviews were written for the Bookman, Daily News, and Sewanee Review. It also includes a biographical essay by me: ‘R. Ellis Roberts: The Critic Who Read for Pleasure’.

I'll post more about the book later, but for now I'll just say that you can pre-order it directly from Nezu Press (Publisher shop: Click here). Or you can do so from the usual online retailers; the book will be showing up in all the usual places soon.

Nezu Press, 14 February 2024.
978-1-7393921-7-8.
Hardback with dust jacket, 258 pages.