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| SUNDIAL SUPERNATURAL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A PAD IN THE STRAW by Christopher Woodforde With a Foreword by Giles Woodforde “A waft of the uncanny blows through these tales, just enough to make the spine agreeably tingle. But never very dreadfully and never for long. The general atmosphere is at once eerie and friendly. Moreover, the author allows his fancy to soar more irresponsibly than if he were writing only for parents. Children can suspend their disbelief with an ease denied, alas, to older persons: it is easier for them to accept a story in which the laws of nature are spectacularly broken. They can be made to believe that spectres, goblins, and dragons can appear in broad, modern daylight and take action there. Indeed, the ‘subtle’ understated ghost story which appeals to the sophisticated grown-up person strikes a child as disappointingly empty. Dr. Woodforde realizes this. These stories exhibit a delightful and Gothic boldness and fantasy.” From a Prefatory Note by David Cecil | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Supernatural | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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GHOST GLEAMS by W. J. WINTLE With a Introduction by Richard Dalby “These tales make no claim to be anything
more than straightforward ghost stories. They were written in answer to the
insistent demand, “Tell us a story!” from eight bright boys whose names stand
on the dedicatory page; and they were told on Sunday nights to the little group
crouching over a wood fire on a wind-swept island off the Western shore. From the Foreword by W. J. Wintle.They were so fortunate as to meet with approval from their rather critical audience. Truth to tell, the gruesome ones met with the best reception. Boys like highly flavoured dishes. But the tales are not all tragic—far from it! They now go forth to face a wider audience: they will be fortunate if they find a kinder one.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | LIFE, BE STILL and Other Stories by H.A. Manhood With an Introduction by Mark Valentine H. A. Manhood's short stories are in the same
mould as those of T. F. Powys and A. E. Coppard, with a strong rural setting
and leavening of folk wisdom, and a sense of allegory or fable to them which
hovers on the brink of the fantastic without embracing it fully. In his best
work, there is an aura of strangeness and a definite feeling of the presence of
a vital, original imagination. He is particularly adept at the arresting and
unusual simile, and at conveying a sense of the timeless and archetypal in both
the country and characters of his stories. A good example is 'The Unbeliever', which
tells of the ancient curator of an historic hunting lodge deep in a forest, not
much visited, and his wrestling with belief and unbelief, and his strange
carvings: all the enigmatic quality of de la Mare's work is here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | DEMOPHON by Forrest Reid With an Introduction ‘Beyond the grave of laurels sacred to Artemis
lay a blue, crinkled sea. It glittered dazzlingly in the hot sunshine; and far
out in the bay where water and sky met, the dark rocks of Salamis rose like a
dream-island, because a God had dropped a haze about them.’ So begins this magical odyssey of ancient Greece, a tale of enchanted seas and islands, where all the world was young; a romance of wonder and adventure, of Gods and men and beasts, of the strange and familiar. Admired, amongst others, by E.M. Forster and
Walter de la Mare, Forrest Reid brought to literature something new, creating a
world unlike any world that has been created before, a vision and a perception
of beauty, previously unexpressed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MODERN CLASSICS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | PATERNS ON THE SAND by Gamel Woolsey With an Introduction by Barbara
Ozieblo The daughter of a cotton plantation
owner and a society beauty half his age, Gamel (née Elizabeth) Woolsey spent an
idyllic childhood in Aiken, South Carolina, a place she would always recall
with nostalgia ("Where yesterdays are better than today" mourns the
final line of her poem "Carolina Low Country"). At the age of 17
she fell madly in love with a boy who killed himself when he realized he was
gay. Then at 20 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and confined for a year to
a sanatorium, where part of her lung was removed. She would often be troubled
by recurrences of TB, especially at times of emotional strain, and the haunted,
translucent appearance characteristic of "consumptives" enhanced her
grave beauty, her gray eyes and dark hair.
Woolsey left South Carolina for New
York. She was never to return, although many years later she revisited her
Charleston adolescence in her second novel, Patterns in the Sand, a
feminist exploration of a young woman's coming of age in a sexist and confining
culture, set at the outbreak of World War I. Written in England in the early
1940s, the novel has remained unpublished until now. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | THE HIGGLER and Other Tales by A.E. Coppard Coppard’s stories, or tales as he preferred to call them, are frequently compared to
those of Anton Chekhov and Thomas Hardy, whose influence Coppard acknowledged,
and also to those of his contemporaries H. E. Bates and D. H. Lawrence. Coppard’s
prose is eloquently lyrical, its evocation of mood and portrayal of emotion
particularly noteworthy. His tales often combine the ordinary and the
extraordinary in unexpected ways. His characters usually are plain people
pursuing the everyday business of life when, suddenly, the supernatural or the
inexplicable intrudes. Imagination and playfulness are rewarded in this
encounter, and both simple country folk and modern sophisticates may possess
these qualities. Coppard
often adopted lively colloquialisms.
His style is a showcase for playful language; he loved words and
relished them
for their own sake as well as for the effects they have on his readers.
For those who have yet to discover the delights and many pleasures of
his work, satisfaction is guaranteed! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | FABLES by T. F. Powys With an Introduction by Ali Shaw If ever Powys’ fatalism makes his writing hard-edged, it is his faith in the marvellous ordinary that steps in to lift the spirit through pure delight in the unexpected. A corpse in its grave calls happily to his friend above the soil, a wedding is celebrated between a footstool and a pair of spectacles, a dead man is temporarily resurrected to converse with the fleas and spiders dwelling around his coffin, and far more. Such fantastical but mundane perspectives offer us the greatness in smallness, the extraordinary in the ordinary. Powys said that, ‘To have the soul and teeth of a lion and the body of a tramp, is the way to tread on this world as it ought to be trodden on.’ And although he believed that a man should never resist his own eventual obliteration, it is my firm hope that this, his fine collection of fables, will persist for countless years to come. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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SO TIBERIUS by ETHEL MANNIN A story for 'those who admire and respect the essential animal characteristics of this most beautiful, interesting and fundamentallly wild creature.' Ethel Mannin (1900 – 1984) was a
popular British novelist and travel writer. Her writing career began in journalism.
She became a prolific author, and also politically and socially concerned. She
married twice: in 1919, a short-lived relationship which produced one daughter,
and in 1938 to Reginald Reynolds, a Quaker and go-between in India between Mahatma
Gandhi and the British authorities. In 1934-5 she was in an intense but
problematic intellectual, emotional and physical relationship with W. B. Yeats and she also had a well-publicised affair
with Bertrand Russell. Of her 95 or so books none, with the exception of the
forthcoming SO TIBERIUS, are currently in print; an oversight which lans to rectify. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A CASE OF LIFE A Collection of Short Stories by ELIZABETH MYERS Elizabeth
Myers, author of A Well Full of Leaves,
The Basilisk of St James, and Mrs Christopher (subsequently made into
a film starring Dirk Bogarde) also published two volumes of short stories. This
new selection gathers together the best of these as well as a number of
previously uncollected stories. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Sundial Press
Sundial House, Sherborne, Dorset February 2012 Contact | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||