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.