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lakserk's review against another edition
4.0
Unexpectedly excellent collection of ghostly and weird stories
fictionfan's review against another edition
4.0
Bedtime reading…
First published in 1929, this was Eleanor Scott’s only collection of weird stories although she wrote several books in other genres. This edition includes all nine of the stories in the original collection, plus two written by “N. Dennett”, now believed to have been a pseudonym of Eleanor Scott, which was itself a pseudonym, the author’s real name being Helen Leys. The introduction is by Aaron Worth, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Boston University, who takes a large part of the credit for inspiring my interest in weird fiction as editor of various collections I’ve read previously, so I’m always pleased to see his name pop up.
In his introduction, Worth tells us that the collection didn’t sell well on its original publication, which he suggests was more to do with poor marketing than the quality of the work. While he points out that many of the stories and the general style are rather derivative of other writers of the period, especially MR James, he suggests that Scott took the weird genre in her own direction towards what would later, quite recently in fact, come to be called “folk horror”. He also says that despite the somewhat derivative quality of some of the stories she makes them her own, and describes them as “intrinsically excellent”.
Even with my limited knowledge of weird and horror fiction, I did indeed find that many of the stories felt quite derivative, not just of James but especially of Arthur Machen, and being forced into this comparison didn’t work to Scott’s benefit, since I feel Machen is significantly better at “folk horror”, even if it didn’t exist as a genre when he was writing. On reading over my notes on each story it appears I also had some issues with her endings, being annoyed sometimes by them being left too ambiguous to be satisfying, and then with other stories lamenting that the ending was too obvious, or too neat, or too well explained. Maybe I was just in a picky, Goldilocks kind of mood! There was only one story where I felt the ending had been exactly the bowl of porridge I’d been looking for.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I enjoyed the collection overall, and there were a few stories that I thought were excellent. Scott was very good at creating an atmosphere of unease and some parts of the stories are genuinely scary, with a nightmarish quality to them. In fact, Scott claimed the stories were based on her own nightmares (although Worth amused me by commenting that “one wonders how much these were influenced by her bedtime reading”). I gave three of the stories 5 stars, one 3 stars, and all the rest either 4 or 4½, so a consistently high standard throughout with no real failures. A good collection rather than a great one for me, but an interesting addition to the BL’s always intriguing Tales of the Weird series.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
First published in 1929, this was Eleanor Scott’s only collection of weird stories although she wrote several books in other genres. This edition includes all nine of the stories in the original collection, plus two written by “N. Dennett”, now believed to have been a pseudonym of Eleanor Scott, which was itself a pseudonym, the author’s real name being Helen Leys. The introduction is by Aaron Worth, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Boston University, who takes a large part of the credit for inspiring my interest in weird fiction as editor of various collections I’ve read previously, so I’m always pleased to see his name pop up.
In his introduction, Worth tells us that the collection didn’t sell well on its original publication, which he suggests was more to do with poor marketing than the quality of the work. While he points out that many of the stories and the general style are rather derivative of other writers of the period, especially MR James, he suggests that Scott took the weird genre in her own direction towards what would later, quite recently in fact, come to be called “folk horror”. He also says that despite the somewhat derivative quality of some of the stories she makes them her own, and describes them as “intrinsically excellent”.
Even with my limited knowledge of weird and horror fiction, I did indeed find that many of the stories felt quite derivative, not just of James but especially of Arthur Machen, and being forced into this comparison didn’t work to Scott’s benefit, since I feel Machen is significantly better at “folk horror”, even if it didn’t exist as a genre when he was writing. On reading over my notes on each story it appears I also had some issues with her endings, being annoyed sometimes by them being left too ambiguous to be satisfying, and then with other stories lamenting that the ending was too obvious, or too neat, or too well explained. Maybe I was just in a picky, Goldilocks kind of mood! There was only one story where I felt the ending had been exactly the bowl of porridge I’d been looking for.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I enjoyed the collection overall, and there were a few stories that I thought were excellent. Scott was very good at creating an atmosphere of unease and some parts of the stories are genuinely scary, with a nightmarish quality to them. In fact, Scott claimed the stories were based on her own nightmares (although Worth amused me by commenting that “one wonders how much these were influenced by her bedtime reading”). I gave three of the stories 5 stars, one 3 stars, and all the rest either 4 or 4½, so a consistently high standard throughout with no real failures. A good collection rather than a great one for me, but an interesting addition to the BL’s always intriguing Tales of the Weird series.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
luxuryofsorrow's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
lola_milk's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
The stories in this collection reminded me of r/nosleep, I think because they both have a borderline funny lack of subtlety. I love r/nosleep, so I did enjoy this collection. It's spooky and fun! Randall's Round and the story about the old woman were my favourite stories.
softrosemint's review against another edition
3.5
eleanor scott is an excellent horror story writer; her writing is atmospheric, scary, imaginative. this collection really showcases her gothic excellence, particularly in the genre of creepy villages and local legends. my favourites were the titular 'randalls round', as well as 'the twelve apostles', 'the room', 'the cure', 'the old lady' and, the written under the alleged pseudonym of n. dennett, 'unburied bane' (so easily at least half of the collection).
joecam79's review against another edition
4.0
Helen Magdalen Leys (1892 – 1965), an educator who spent most of her life working at a teacher’s training college in Oxfordshire. In 1928 she published her first novel, War Among Ladies, a somewhat controversial novel critiquing the English girls’ high school system. It was, perhaps, the subject-matter and her position as a teacher that led her to adopt the pseudonym Eleanor Scott. She stuck to it for Randalls Round, her second book, a collection of weird tales which came out in 1929 (although this includes the story The Room which had already been previously published by Cornhill Magazine under Leys’ own name). As Scott she also published other novels and two collective biographies for children – Adventurous Women (1933) and Heroic Women (1939). She is also likely the author of two detective novels written by a certain “P.R. Shore”.
Randalls Round was published during what can be considered the heyday of the classic English supernatural tale, at a time when the likes of M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, May Sinclair, E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare were still active. In the light of this fierce competition, it might not be surprising that Scott’s stories, which sometimes come across as rather derivative, failed to make an impact. This is a pity because, even when Scott appears to be following other models, her work is not simply good, but genuinely creepy. Randalls Round has been reissued by a number of small presses in the past years, but is now available as part of British Library’s brilliant Tales of the Weird series, which will surely give Scott’s stories the wider exposure they deserve.
In her foreword, Scott claims that the nine pieces in the collection “had their origin in dreams”, hence why this new edition is subtitled Nine Nightmares. Well, if that was really the case, Scott must have had some pretty restless nights! Whatever the inspiration, however, much authorial work has gone into crafting the “detached incidents and scenes” typical of dreams into taut little chillers.
One of the highlights is the title-piece, a story which, like others in the book, would today be clearly shelved under what is now recognised as the distinct sub-genre of folk horror. A male undergraduate visits the Cotswolds village of Randalls and witnesses what he thinks is a quaint folk dance in the market square. Exploring further, he discovers that the origins of this dance lay in a ceremony, probably sacrificial, which used to be performed around a local long barrow known as Randalls Bank. Against express advice, he decides to explore the barrow on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, never a great idea if you’re the protagonist of a folk horror tale. Similar echoes of Machen haunt Simnel Acres Farm, which also features an Oxford undergraduate who falls prey to ancient influences. The Old Lady also features Oxford undergrads, although girls in this case, and a tale of vampirism and blood sacrifice which recalls Seaton’s Aunt by de la Mare and, possibly, Braddon’s Good Lady Ducayne.
Two other strong stories have a clear M.R. James feel to them. In The Twelve Apostles, a wealthy American who buys an allegedly haunted English manor, seeks a missing treasure linked to the private Catholic chaplain (and supposed alchemist) of the Squire of the Manor in Elizabethan times. In Celui-là the protagonist Maddox spends some days of rest on the Breton coast, staying with the local curate. Despite the curate’s warnings, he becomes uncommonly obsessed with a strange figure he spots during an evening walk and a strange box containing a parchment with a strange invocation written on it. In this story and The Room, about a group of six friends who dare each other to stay the night in a haunted chamber, I distinctly felt a philo-Catholic sensibility. As is my habit, I read Aaron Worth’s informative introduction to the volume after I finished the rest of the book, and was not at all surprised to learn of Scott’s Catholicism and her studies of Medieval mystery plays, both of which could be considered influences which added colour to her stories.
The volume includes two stories by one “N. Dennett” which are now generally attributed to Leys/Scott. Unburied Bane features a decrepit cottage containing a witch’s skull whereas The Menhir takes us back to full-on folk horror territory. I guess there are enough similarities with the rest of the stories to justify the attribution but, whatever their authorship, I felt that these two stories were more over the top than the rest of the volume and, consequently, less to my liking.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/11/randalls-round-nine-nightmares-by.html
Randalls Round was published during what can be considered the heyday of the classic English supernatural tale, at a time when the likes of M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, May Sinclair, E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare were still active. In the light of this fierce competition, it might not be surprising that Scott’s stories, which sometimes come across as rather derivative, failed to make an impact. This is a pity because, even when Scott appears to be following other models, her work is not simply good, but genuinely creepy. Randalls Round has been reissued by a number of small presses in the past years, but is now available as part of British Library’s brilliant Tales of the Weird series, which will surely give Scott’s stories the wider exposure they deserve.
In her foreword, Scott claims that the nine pieces in the collection “had their origin in dreams”, hence why this new edition is subtitled Nine Nightmares. Well, if that was really the case, Scott must have had some pretty restless nights! Whatever the inspiration, however, much authorial work has gone into crafting the “detached incidents and scenes” typical of dreams into taut little chillers.
One of the highlights is the title-piece, a story which, like others in the book, would today be clearly shelved under what is now recognised as the distinct sub-genre of folk horror. A male undergraduate visits the Cotswolds village of Randalls and witnesses what he thinks is a quaint folk dance in the market square. Exploring further, he discovers that the origins of this dance lay in a ceremony, probably sacrificial, which used to be performed around a local long barrow known as Randalls Bank. Against express advice, he decides to explore the barrow on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, never a great idea if you’re the protagonist of a folk horror tale. Similar echoes of Machen haunt Simnel Acres Farm, which also features an Oxford undergraduate who falls prey to ancient influences. The Old Lady also features Oxford undergrads, although girls in this case, and a tale of vampirism and blood sacrifice which recalls Seaton’s Aunt by de la Mare and, possibly, Braddon’s Good Lady Ducayne.
Two other strong stories have a clear M.R. James feel to them. In The Twelve Apostles, a wealthy American who buys an allegedly haunted English manor, seeks a missing treasure linked to the private Catholic chaplain (and supposed alchemist) of the Squire of the Manor in Elizabethan times. In Celui-là the protagonist Maddox spends some days of rest on the Breton coast, staying with the local curate. Despite the curate’s warnings, he becomes uncommonly obsessed with a strange figure he spots during an evening walk and a strange box containing a parchment with a strange invocation written on it. In this story and The Room, about a group of six friends who dare each other to stay the night in a haunted chamber, I distinctly felt a philo-Catholic sensibility. As is my habit, I read Aaron Worth’s informative introduction to the volume after I finished the rest of the book, and was not at all surprised to learn of Scott’s Catholicism and her studies of Medieval mystery plays, both of which could be considered influences which added colour to her stories.
The volume includes two stories by one “N. Dennett” which are now generally attributed to Leys/Scott. Unburied Bane features a decrepit cottage containing a witch’s skull whereas The Menhir takes us back to full-on folk horror territory. I guess there are enough similarities with the rest of the stories to justify the attribution but, whatever their authorship, I felt that these two stories were more over the top than the rest of the volume and, consequently, less to my liking.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/11/randalls-round-nine-nightmares-by.html
gudrun's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.25
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