Book Hauls!

[GOLLUM]

Today...

The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland and selected writings - Charlotte Perkins-Gilman. *A nice and cheap black classic edn. I have the classic Yellow Wallpaper but not the novel Herland or some of Gilman's other short stories. This was partly based on antilqouax's enthusiastic review of Herland. Blurb: A superb collection of fiction and poetry from a major feminist voice in American literature Wonderfully sardonic and slyly humorous, the writings of landmark American feminist and socialist thinker Charlotte Perkins Gilman were penned in response to her frustration with the gender-based double standard that prevailed in America as the twentieth century began. Perhaps best known for her chilling depiction of a woman's mental breakdown in her unforgettable 1892 short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper," Gilman also wrote Herland, a cunning, wry novel that imagines a peaceful, progressive, environmentally conscious country from which men have been absent for two thousand years. Both are included in this volume, along with a selection of Gilman's major short stories and her poems.

The Doll - Boleslaw Prus *NYRB edn. Generally seen as the best known novel to have come out of 19th Century Poland and as I now recall it Poland's great poet Milosz regarding it as the greatest Polish novel, albeit Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis might have something to say about that, at least in terms of popularity...not to mention the brilliant Bruno Schulz of course. Blurb: Bolesław Prus is often compared to Chekhov, and Prus’s masterpiece might be described as an intimate epic, a beautifully detailed, utterly absorbing exploration of life in late-nineteenth-century Warsaw, which is also a prophetic reckoning with some of the social forces—imperialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism among them—that would soon convulse Europe as never before. But The Dollis above all a brilliant novel of character, dramatizing conflicting ideas through the various convictions, ambitions, confusions, and frustrations of an extensive and varied cast. At the center of the book are three men from three different generations. Prus’s fatally flawed hero is Wokulski, a successful businessman who yearns for recognition from Poland’s decadent aristocracy and falls desperately in love with the highborn, glacially beautiful Izabela. Wokulski’s story is intertwined with those of the incorrigibly romantic old clerk Rzecki, nostalgic for the revolutions of 1848, and of the bright young scientist Ochocki, who dreams of a future full of flying machines and other marvels, making for a book of great scope and richness that is, as Stanisław Barańczak writes in his introduction, at once “an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story … , a still topical diagnosis of society’s ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man.”

[antiloquax]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Today...

The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland and selected writings - Charlotte Perkins-Gilman.

Sounds like an excellent volume!

[j. d. worthington]

Received in the mail three books containing supernatural fiction largely in the Jamesian tradition:

Ancient Haunts, made up of two collections:
The Stoneground Ghost Tales (1912),by E. G. Swain
Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Grammarye (1919), by Arthur Gray

Shadows Gothic and Grotesque, also made up of two collections:
Black Spirits and White (1895), by Ralph Adams Cram
Tales of the Supernatural (1894), by James Platt

Nine Ghosts, by R. H. Malden (1943, though the stories were written sporadically between 1909 and 1942)

The first two are from Coachwhip Publications, and though not facsimiles are tastefully and attractively done, Nine Ghosts is from Oxford City Reprints, with a very subdued cover; all of which suits this sort of stories very well, I think.

[HoopyFrood]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland and selected writings - Charlotte Perkins-Gilman.

I like The Yellow Wallpaper a lot.

[Extollager]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Received in the mail three books containing supernatural fiction largely in the Jamesian tradition:

Ancient Haunts, made up of two collections:
The Stoneground Ghost Tales (1912),by E. G. Swain
Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Grammarye (1919), by Arthur Gray

Shadows Gothic and Grotesque, also made up of two collections:
Black Spirits and White (1895), by Ralph Adams Cram
Tales of the Supernatural (1894), by James Platt

Nine Ghosts, by R. H. Malden (1943, though the stories were written sporadically between 1909 and 1942)

The first two are from Coachwhip Publications, and though not facsimiles are tastefully and attractively done, Nine Ghosts is from Oxford City Reprints, with a very subdued cover; all of which suits this sort of stories very well, I think.

I've read a fair bit of the ghost stories not by t M. R. James but that were published in his style, and I suppose the authors I think I liked best were A. N. L. Munby (The Alabaster Hand etc) and L. T. C. Rolt. Incidentally I corresponded late in his life with Benedikt Benedikz, who'd known Munby, as I recall, and been a student of Tolkien's. He'd had a big Haggard collection, too. I miss him...

[dask]

SKETCHES IN CRITICISM by Van Wyck Brooks, 1932 first edition hardback.
NEW ENGLAND: INDIAN SUMMER, 1865-1915 by Van Wyck Brooks, 1940 first edition hardback
GOLDEN MULTITUDES: THE STORY OF BEST SELLERS IN THE UNITED STATES by Frank Luther Mott, 1947 first edition hardback.
THE STORY OF MODERN ART by Sheldon Cheney, 1941 first edition hardback.

[j. d. worthington]

Dale: I don't recall ever reading Munby (though I may have, many years ago). I'll have to look that one up. I do have Rolt's collection, though; and it is a fine addition to this school of supernatural fiction.

dask: Impressive! I envy you several of those items, I do....

[dask]

You know what I really like about older books? The nice thick pages, like thin slats of wood. Sounds crazy, I know.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by dask

You know what I really like about older books? The nice thick pages, like thin slats of wood. Sounds crazy, I know.

LOL. I do have some like that, yes; though I also have some where the paper is so thin you don't want to breathe on it too heavily....

[dask]

Found this on the free shelf at the library. Intended for young adults, these stories, all by classic authors, shy from "the too-horrible, the too-gruesome, the morbid" and zero in on scares tinged with humor. Sounds good to me. Might just be my next Halloween read.

[j. d. worthington]

You may have read all of these, dask, but if not, you might want to look into yet another couple which were intended for "young adults" or perhaps even children, which I have in the Whitman Publishing Co.'s editions from the mid- to late-60s:

Tales to Tremble By:
"The Hand", by Guy de Maupassant
"The Middle Toe of the Right Foot", by Ambrose Bierce
"No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman", by Charles Dickens
"Adventure of the German Student", by Washington Irving
"The Sutor of Selkirk", Anonymous
"The Upper Berth", by F. Marion Crawford
"The Judge's House", by Bram Stoker

More Tales to Tremble By:
"The Red Lodge", by H. Russell Wakefield
"Sredni Vashtar", by Saki
"Thurnley Abbey", by Perceval Landon
"God Grante That She Lye Stille", by Cynthia Asquith
"The Voice in the Night", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Extra Passenger", by August Derleth
"Casting the Runes", by M. R. James
"The Book", by Margaret Irwin

They can generally be found online for well under $5, often for a dollar or so....

[dask]

Whitman, eh? Those funny hardbacks specializing in tv shows? Neat. Got a few myself. My most prized is COMBAT but I don't know where it is. I see they're selling for about five bucks at one of the antique stores in town. Will check for these next time I'm there. A few stories look familiar, most don't, though. Thanks for the info.

[j. d. worthington]

Just a quick look, and... if you're not averse to buying them from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Tremble-...6401823&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/More-Tales-Tre...6401823&sr=1-2

[slack]

Couple by Jim Carroll -- Basketball Diaries, and Forced Entry. And Library of America's Raymond Carver collection.

[Extollager]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

You may have read all of these, dask, but if not, you might want to look into yet another couple which were intended for "young adults" or perhaps even children, which I have in the Whitman Publishing Co.'s editions from the mid- to late-60s:

More Tales to Tremble By:
"The Red Lodge", by H. Russell Wakefield
"Sredni Vashtar", by Saki
"Thurnley Abbey", by Perceval Landon
"God Grante That She Lye Stille", by Cynthia Asquith
"The Voice in the Night", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Extra Passenger", by August Derleth
"Casting the Runes", by M. R. James
"The Book", by Margaret Irwin

They can generally be found online for well under $5, often for a dollar or so....

That More Tales book was something I acquired when I was a kid. I have a memory, or maybe just an impression, of asking my eighth grade teacher to read the Hodgson. Anyway, this book was almost certainly my first encounter with the great M. R. James and with W. H. Hodgson. "The Book" was one of my first experiences of the "cool" effect of Latin. I remember that, having read Ransom and Merlin's Latin dialogue in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, I told my 9th-grade English teacher that I would like to know Latin. His response was: Why? It's a dead language. Well done, Mr. Paulson.... NOT. (But he was a good guy anyway.)