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.