Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird

Mike Ashley (ed)
British Library

It is too often accepted that during the 19th and early 20th centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake—but this is far from the truth. This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors. See the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sensitively-drawn nightmares of Marie Corelli and Violet Quirk. Hear the captivating voices of Weird Tales magazine contributors Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Greye La Spina, and Margaret St Clair, and bow down to the sensational, surreal, and challenging writers who broke down the barriers of the day. Featuring material never before republished, from the abyssal depths of the British Library vaults.

I've read a fair few of these British Library anthologies now and generally (as is often the case with anthologies) they've been a bit of a mixed bag but leaning towards the good and this one is no exception.

Firstly let's address the word 'Lost' in the title. Yes, for the most part these are all pretty damn obscure stories buut I'm not sure you could ever describe Marjorie Bowen's tale of selfishness and indolence, 'The Bishop of Hell', which I probably have in at least a dozen anthologies in my collection.  May Sinclair's 'The Nature of the Evidence' whilst certainly being more obscure than Bowen's tale again hardly counts as a 'lost' story.  The others though are far less anthologised, some deservedly so, but some proved a real treat.

Mary Braddon's 'A Revelation' opens the book in classic Victorian style all familial intrigue and visions from beyond the grave.  It's a solid but fairly uninspiring sort of story. Marie Corelli has a more religious side on display with her story of love, betrayal and forgiveness in the naively charming 'The Sculptor's Angel' whilst Edith Nesbit follows a similar route but with the forgiveness spurned in 'From the Dead'.  Frances Hodgson Burnett's 'The Christmas In The Fog' is a purportedly true Xmas tale of her travel across the Atlantic, it's very Dickensian and very dull whilst Marie Belloc Lowndes gives us a love story that's too convenient by half.

Alicia Ramsey's 'A Modern Circe' is a slight folklorish tale of seductive witchcraft and murder which would probably have been dragged out to novel length these days but it's quite long enough here.  Greye La Spina's vampire tale 'The Anti-Macassar' on the other hand would have benefitted greatly from more room as what is a sprightly and enjoyable story is almost spoiled by a jarring ending.

We slip into science fiction for Sophie Wenzel Ellis' 'White Lady' as a young man falls in love with a plant he's invented much to the dismay of his fiance.  It's suitably silly but if that premise sounds your sort of thing then I'd rather direct your attention towards Valancourt Books' reprint of Ronald Fraser's fabulously bonkers 'Flower Phantoms'.

G.G. Pendarves - who I'm sure I've read before but can't quite place - provides a real highlight with the creepily brutal 'The Laughing Thing' whereas Lady Eleanor Smith's 'Candlelight' was a witty but ultimately rather pointless farce.  Jessie Douglas Kerruish provides a fun tale of 'The Wonderful Tune' that raises the dead but Margaret St Clair's science fiction tale 'Island of the Hands' just felt out of place.

'The Unwanted' of Mary Elizabeth Counselman's rural Alabamatale is enjoyably daft but with a gentle heart before the book ends strongly with Leonora Carrington's fabulously odd 'The Seventh Horse'.

As I mentioned it's another strong entrant into this series but as has been the case with each of the others I've read it's a little patchy although as I've said often before what didn't work for me may well prove to be your favourite and if you've an interest in strange tales of the early 20th century then you really should be exploring this series.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Uncanny Stories

May Sinclair
Wordsworth Editions

May Sinclair was an innovator of modern fiction, a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. In her Uncanny Stories (1923), Sinclair combines the traditional ghost story with the discoveries of Freud and Einstein. The stories shock, enthral, delight and unsettle.
Two lovers are doomed to repeat their empty affair for the rest of eternity... A female telepath is forced to face the consequences of her actions... The victim of a violent murder has the last laugh on his assailant... An amateur philosopher discovers that there is more to Heaven than meets the eye.
Specially included in this volume is The Intercessor (1911), Sinclair's powerful story of childhood and abandoned love, a tale whose intensity compares with that of the Brontës.

 I first came across May Sinclair a few months back in the 'Mortal Echoes' anthology from The British Library which featured her story 'Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched' a truly terrifying tales of a very personal Hell.  Not long after that I watched the TV adaptation of her 'Intercessor' which was a rather beautiful ghost story about loss, blame and guilt.  I was already hooked after the former and by the end of the second I was besotted.  As it happened sat unread on a shelf here I had this collection of her work so I happily waded in.

Following what seems to have been a fairly difficult childhood and a problematic relationship[ with her mother, Sinclair took to writing to support them at a time when she was also becoming an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement.  All these factors have a presence in her stories where independent and sexually liberated women find themselves at the mercy of oppressive control either from family, tradition or religion.

Those two previously mentioned stories bookend this collection and do so in a manner that shows the extremes of her tales; the cruel, inescapable brutality of the former and the poignant delicacy of the latter joined by the quality of the prose.

Between the two reside various shades of fear with the standout moment being the psychic shenanigans of 'The Flaw in the Crystal' that, with it's lead character of a confident and sexually liberated young woman is a real breath of fresh air although that's not to belittle any of the remaining five stories.  Admittedly some, like 'The Token' are a little slight but they don't hang around and make for nifty quick reads between the more developed tales.

Sinclair's supernatural output was small but substantial and it's a shame that she isn't better regarded as stories like 'Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched' have a timeless quality that still resonates.

Buy it here - Uncanny Stories (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural) (Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural)

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The Intercessor

'The Intercessor' was originally written by May Sinclair and published in 1931 in her second collection of supernatural stories called, funnily enough, 'The Intercessor and Other Stories'.  Sinclair is a neglected figure in the history of spooky stories and unjustly so as her stories have a gentleness and a subtlety that is often less pronounced in the work of her contemporaries and core characters that reflect her non literary work as a campaigner for women's and worker's rights.

In 'The Intercessor' a writer, Mr Garvin (John Duttine ('Day of the Triffids)) seeking refuge from the noisy kids in town he relocates to the spare room of the Falshaw's remote farmhouse where he finds a childlike distraction of a very different kind and, as the story progresses, he becomes embroiled in a family history rife with betrayal, bitterness and death and resolves to heal the rifts.

Made for the mid 80s series 'Shades of Darkness', which also included adaptations of stories by Walter de la Mare (watch 'Seaton's Aunt' here), Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Bowen and Edith Wharton, 'The Intercessor' is, almost, as much a family drama as it is a ghost story and in it's limited run time makes the most of both aspects.  The ghostly presence at the heart of the film is refreshingly non-malevolent but the vaguely hallucinatory nature of her appearances is handled fantastically well.

'The Intercessor' is a tale of resentment, loss, madness and redemption filled with great performances from all involved in a very satisfying, coherent and just simply lovely story that, like it's author, deserves to be much better known.

(Please note that the film is only the first 50 minutes of the vid the rest is the episode repeating itself)

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.