= Algernon_Blackwood =

======================================================================
= Algernon_Blackwood =
======================================================================

Introduction
======================================================================
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) was
an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story
writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history
of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is
more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except
Dunsany's" and that his short story collection 'Incredible Adventures'
(1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other
century".

Life and work
======================================================================
Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (now part of southeast London,
then part of northwest Kent). Between 1871 and 1880, he lived at
Crayford Manor House, Crayford and he was educated at Wellington
College. His father, Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, was a Post Office
administrator; his mother, Harriet Dobbs, was the widow of the 6th
Duke of Manchester. According to Peter Penzoldt, his father, "though
not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow
religious ideas". After Algernon read the work of a Hindu sage left
behind at his parents' house, he developed an interest in Buddhism and
other eastern philosophies.

Blackwood had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada,
where he also operated a hotel for six months, as a newspaper reporter
in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for 'The New York
Times', private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher. During his
time in Canada, he also became one of the founding members of Toronto
Theosophical Society in February 1891. Throughout his adult life, he
was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he
moved back to England and started to write stories of the
supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original
collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and
television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a
number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He
was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories
reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The
Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner,
but also cheerful company.

Jack Sullivan stated that "Blackwood's life parallels his work more
neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his
lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination
of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn't steeping himself in
occultism, including Rosicrucianism, or Buddhism he was likely to be
skiing or mountain climbing." Blackwood was a member of one of the
factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as was his
contemporary Arthur Machen. Cabalistic themes influence his novel 'The
Human Chord'.

His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The
Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short
notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short
stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood
wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to
frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels
'The Centaur', which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a
herd of the mythical creatures; and 'Julius LeVallon' and its sequel
'The Bright Messenger', which deal with reincarnation and the
possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. In
correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Blackwood wrote,

My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other
powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of
human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension
of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of
possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness.... Also, all
that happens in our universe is 'natural'; under Law; but an extension
of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary
powers etc., and the word "supernatural" seems the best word for
treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness
to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a
new universe. A "change" in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is
something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and
know.

Autobiography
======================================================================
Blackwood wrote an autobiography of his early years, 'Episodes Before
Thirty' (1923), and there is a biography, 'Starlight Man,' by Mike
Ashley ().

Death
======================================================================
Blackwood died after experiencing several strokes. Officially his
death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with
arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders
Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to
Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the
mountains that he had loved for more than forty years.

Novels
========
By date of first publication:
*'Jimbo: A Fantasy' (1909)
*'The Education of Uncle Paul' (1909)
*'The Human Chord' (1910)
*'The Centaur' (1911)
*'A Prisoner in Fairyland' (1913); sequel to 'The Education of Uncle
Paul'
*'The Extra Day' (1915)
*'Julius LeVallon' (1916)
*'The Wave' (1916)
*'The Promise of Air' (1918)
*'The Garden of Survival' (1918)
*'The Bright Messenger' (1921); sequel to 'Julius LeVallon'
*'Episodes Before Thirty' (1923)
*'Dudley & Gilderoy: A Nonsense' (1929)
Children's novels:
*'Sambo and Snitch' (1927)
*'The Fruit Stoners: Being the Adventures of Maria Among the Fruit
Stoners' (1934)

Plays
=======
By date of first performance:
*'The Starlight Express' (1915), coauthored with Violet Pearn;
incidental music by Edward Elgar; based on Blackwood's 1913 novel 'A
Prisoner in Fairyland'
*'Karma' a reincarnation play in prologue epilogue and three acts
(1918), coauthored with Violet Pearn;
*'The Crossing' (1920a), coauthored with Bertram Forsyth; based on
Blackwood's 1913 short story "Transition"
*'Through the Crack' (1920), coauthored with Violet Pearn; based on
Blackwood's 1909 novel 'The Education of Uncle Paul' and 1915 novel
'The Extra Day'
*'White Magic' (1921), coauthored with Bertram Forsyth
*'The Halfway House' (1921), coauthored with Elaine Ainley
*'Max Hensig' (1929), coauthored with Frederick Kinsey Peile; based on
Blackwood's 1907 short story "Max Hensig - Bacteriologist and
Murderer"

Short fiction collections
===========================
By date of first publication:
*'The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories' (1906); original collection
*'The Listener and Other Stories' (1907); original collection
*'John Silence' (1908); original collection; reprinted with added
preface, 1942
*'The Lost Valley and Other Stories' (1910); original collection
*'Pan's Garden: a Volume of Nature Stories' (1912); original
collection
*'Ten Minute Stories' (1914a); original collection
*'Incredible Adventures' (1914b); original collection
*'Day and Night Stories' (1917); original collection
*'Wolves of God, and Other Fey Stories' (1921); original collection
*'Tongues of Fire and Other Sketches' (1924); original collection
*'Ancient Sorceries and Other Tales' (1927a); selections from previous
Blackwood collections
*'The Dance of Death and Other Tales' (1927b); selections from
previous Blackwood collections; reprinted as 1963's 'The Dance of
Death and Other Stories'
*'Strange Stories' (1929); selections from previous Blackwood
collections
*'Short Stories of To-Day & Yesterday' (1930); selections from
previous Blackwood collections
*'The Willows and Other Queer Tales' (1932); selected by G. F. Maine
from previous Blackwood collections
*'Shocks' (1935); original collection
*'The Tales of Algernon Blackwood' (1938); selections from previous
Blackwood collections, with a new preface by Blackwood
*'Selected Tales of Algernon Blackwood' (1942); selections from
previous Blackwood collections (not to be confused with the 1964
Blackwood collection of the same title)
*'Selected Short Stories of Algernon Blackwood' (1945); selections
from previous Blackwood collections
*'The Doll and One Other' (1946); original collection
*'Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural' (1949); selections from
previous Blackwood collections
*'In the Realm of Terror' (1957); selections from previous Blackwood
collections
*'The Dance of Death and Other Stories' (1963); reprint of 1927's 'The
Dance of Death and Other Tales'
*'Selected Tales of Algernon Blackwood' (1964); selections from
previous Blackwood collections (not to be confused with the 1942
Blackwood collection of the same title)
*'Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre' (1967); selections from
previous Blackwood collections
*'Ancient Sorceries and Other Stories' (1968); selections from
previous Blackwood collections
*'Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood' (1973), selected and
introduced by Everett F. Bleiler; selections from previous Blackwood
collections; includes Blackwood's own preface to 1938's 'The Tales of
Algernon Blackwood'
*'The Best Supernatural Tales of Algernon Blackwood' (1973); selected
and introduced by Felix Morrow; selections from 1929's 'Strange
Stories'
*'Tales of Terror and Darkness' (1977); omnibus edition of 'Tales of
the Mysterious and Macabre' (1967) and 'Tales of the Uncanny and
Supernatural' (1949).
*'Tales of the Supernatural' (1983); selected and introduced by Mike
Ashley; selections from previous Blackwood collections
*'The Magic Mirror' (1989); Original collection selected, introduced,
and with notes by Mike Ashley;
*'The Complete John Silence Stories' (1997); selected and introduced
by S. T. Joshi; reprint of 1908's 'John Silence' (without the preface
to the 1942 reprint) and the one remaining John Silence story, "A
Victim of Higher Space"
*'Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories' (2002); selected,
introduced, and notes by S. T. Joshi; selections from previous
Blackwood collections
*'Algernon Blackwood's Canadian Tales of Terror' (2004); selected,
introduced, with notes by John Robert Colombo; eight stories of
special Canadian interest plus information on the author's years in
Canada
*'Roarings from Further Out: Four Weird Novellas' (2020); selected and
edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes; part of British Library Publishing's
Tales of the Weird series

Essays
========
*'The Lure of the Unknown: Essays on the Strange' (2022); edited and
introduced by Mike Ashley. Dublin: Swan River Press. Limited to 400
unnumbered copies. (Two photographic postcards and a facsimile
signature of Blackwood laid in).

Legacy
======================================================================
H. P. Lovecraft included Blackwood as one of the "Modern Masters" in
the section of that name in "Supernatural Horror in Literature". In
'The Books in My Life', Henry Miller chose Blackwood's 'The Bright
Messenger' as "the most extraordinary novel on psychoanalysis, one
that dwarfs the subject." Authors who have been influenced by
Blackwood's work include William Hope Hodgson, George Allan England,
H. Russell Wakefield, "L. Adams Beck" (Elizabeth Louisa Moresby),
Margery Lawrence, Evangeline Walton, Ramsey Campbell and Graham Joyce.

In the first draft of his guidance notes to translators of his work,
"Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings", J. R. R. Tolkien stated that
he derived the phrase "crack of doom" from an unnamed story by
Blackwood. In her book, 'Tolkien's Modern Reading', Holly Ordway
states that this unnamed Blackwood work is his 1909 novel 'The
Education of Uncle Paul'. She explains that the children of Paul's
sister, who he is visiting, tell him of the "crack between Yesterday
and To-morrow", and that "if we're 'very' quick, we can find the crack
and slip through... And, once inside there, there's no time, of
course... 'Anything' may happen, and 'everything' come true." Ordway
comments that this would have attracted Tolkien because of his
interest in travelling back in time.

Frank Belknap Long's 1928 story "The Space-Eaters" alludes to
Blackwood's fiction. Clark Ashton Smith's story "Genius Loci" (1933)
was inspired by Blackwood's story "The Transfer". The plot of Caitlin
R. Kiernan's novel 'Threshold' (2001) is influenced by Blackwood's
work. Kiernan has cited Blackwood as an important influence on her
writing. Blackwood appears as a character in the novel 'The Curse of
the Wendigo' by Rick Yancey.

Critical studies
======================================================================
An early essay on Blackwood's work was "Algernon Blackwood: An
Appreciation," by Grace Isabel Colbron (1869-1943), which appeared in
'The Bookman' in February 1915.

Peter Penzoldt devotes the final chapter of 'The Supernatural in
Fiction' (1952) to an analysis of Blackwood's work and dedicates the
book "with deep admiration and gratitude, to Algernon Blackwood, the
greatest of them all". A critical analysis of Blackwood's work appears
in Jack Sullivan, 'Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story From Le
Fanu to Blackwood', 1978.

David Punter has written two essays on Blackwood. There is a critical
essay on Blackwood's work in S. T. Joshi's 'The Weird Tale' (1990).
Edward Wagenknecht analyses Blackwood's work in his book 'Seven
Masters of Supernatural Fiction'. Eugene Thacker, in his "Horror of
Philosophy" series of books, discusses Blackwood's stories "The
Willows" and "The Man Whom The Trees Loved" as examples of how
supernatural horror poses philosophical questions regarding the
relation between human beings and the "cosmic indifference" of the
world.

Christopher Matthew Scott analyzes Blackwood's use of Christian
symbolism and story setting as connected to the author's biography;
describing a spiritual progression up from hellish city, through
garden, forest, and mountain. Brian R. Hauser discusses Blackwood's
John Silence in the context of figures made popular by 1990s cinematic
narratives, grouping him with Ichabod Crane and Fox Mulder, and
classifying him as an early example of the supernatural detective
whose investigation of a traumatized space mirrors a psychoanalyst's
investigation of a traumatized psyche. Henry Bartholomew includes the
"dark ecology" of Blackwood's "Pan's Garden" in his discussion of
speculative realism and the gothic.

See also
======================================================================
*List of horror fiction authors
*Religion and mythology
*'Tales of Mystery', a 1960s British supernatural television drama
series
*Weird fiction

General sources
======================================================================
*
* US edition of 'Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon
Blackwood'.
* UK edition of 'Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life'.
* Modern reissue of subject's memoir; originally published in 1923
(London: Cassell & Co.).
*Burleson, Donald. "Algernon Blackwood's 'The Listener: A Hearing'".
'Studies in Weird Fiction' 5 (Spring 1989), pp. 15-19.
*Colombo, John Robert. "Blackwood's Books: A Bibliography Devoted to
Algernon Blackwood" Toronto Hounslow Press 1981
*Colombo, John Robert. (ed) Algernon Blackwood's Canadian Tales of
Terror Lake Eugenia, Ontario Battered Silicon Dispatch Box 2004
*Goddin, Jeffrey. "Subtle Perceptions: The Fantasy Novels of Algernon
Blackwood" in Darrell Schweitzer (ed) 'Discovering Classic Fantasy
Fiction', Gillette NJ: Wildside Press, 1986, pp. 94-103.
*Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". Dictionary of Literary
Biography. Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists, First
Series. Ed. George M. Johnson. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
*Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". Dictionary of Literary
Biography. British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880-1914. Ed. William F.
Naufftus. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
*Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". New Dictionary of National
Biography. Ed. Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
*Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood’s Modernist Experiments in
Psychical Detection". Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in
Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction. Stuttgart: Ibidem
Press, 2007. pp. 29-51.
*Johnson, George M. "The Other Side of Edwardian Fiction: Two
Forgotten Fantasy Novels of 1911". Wormwood: Literature of the
fantastic, supernatural and decadent. UK, No. 16 (Spring 2011) 3-15.
*
*Thacker, Eugene.
"[https://lithub.com/how-algernon-blackwood-turned-nature-into-sublime-horror/
How Algernon Blackwood Turned Nature Into Sublime Horror]". LitHub.
(March 8, 2021).
*
*Wessells, Henry (2023). "Etta, with much affection from Blackie."
'The Book Collector' 72 (Summer): 328-331.

Further reading
======================================================================
*Goddin, Jeffrey. "Subtle Perceptions: The Fantasy Novels of Algernon
Blackwood" in Darrell Schweitzer, ed. 'Discovering Classic Fantasy
Fiction'. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 1996, 94-103.
*Gilbert, Stuart. "Algernon Blackwood, Novelist and Mystic".
'Transition' No 35 (July 1935).
*Letson, Russell Francis J. "The Approaches to Mystery: The Fantasies
of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood." 'Dissertation Abstracts
International', 36 (1976): 8047A (Southern Illinois University).
*Sullivan, Jack. 'Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le
Fanu to Blackwood'. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1978.
*Wagenknecht, Edward. 'Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction'.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991, Chapter Four.

External links
======================================================================
*
*
*
*[https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/algernon-blackwood/ Fantastic
Fiction Algernon Blackwood page]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20170805144455/http://www.buried.com/interviews/horror.php?id=209
Spitzer Interview: Adapting The Willows]
*[http://algernonblackwood.org Collection of Blackwood Stories]
*[http://www.litquotes.com/quote_author_resp.php?AName=Algernon%20Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood Quotes]
*
*
*[https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/db/script/864/ Play 'Starlight
Express' at Great War Theatre]

License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood