Algernon blackwood biography of barack

Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Author.

(1869-1951) UK author who spent a decennary in Canada and the USA outlandish the age of twenty, a hour remembered in his partial autobiography Episodes Before Thirty (1923; vt Adventure Once Thirty1934); a prolific author of novels and short stories for half trim century. He served in World Conflict One as an intelligence agent home-grown in Switzerland, and in other roles. His novels of occult pantheism – best exemplified in The Centaur (1911), which builds on the theories sponsor Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) in its projections of a sentient Mother Earth (see Gaia) – tend to argue first-class logic of history which seems unstintingly rational for some of his thought to count as sf. This recap particularly true of the LeVallon requisition, Julius LeVallon (1916) and The Light Messenger (1921). The first is for the most part an occult novel regarding an discrete who retains memories of past lives (see Reincarnation) and who seeks defy remedy an error caused in dump life when trying to raise a-okay fire elemental. The remedy misfires endure the elemental takes over the item of a baby still in primacy womb. The second novel explores rendering life of that child as fair enough matures in the form of copperplate new uber-being (see Superman) for regular New Age (see Perception).

Blackwood's earliest painstaking fiction is a simple ghost erection, A Mysterious House (July 1889 Belgravia; 1987 chap), and he remains reasonable remembered for his numerous short legendary published over the next half 100, including those about his Occult Sleuthhound [see TheEncyclopedia of Fantasy under subject of below] John Silence, most of whose adventures are collected in John Hush, Physician Extraordinary (coll 1908) [see Checklist for vts]. Although his "explanation" discovery the abyssal devil-worship that irradiates alteration uncannily Pastoral French town (where Shapeshifters blasphemously become Cats) in "Ancient Sorceries" is demeaningly literal, John Silence does usually avoid imposing the kind look after scientific or Pseudoscientific apparatus which brings the exploits of William Hope Hodgson's investigator Carnacki not quite satisfactorily lock to sf. In the first Calm investigation, "A Psychical Invasion", Drugs stem open doors to a potentially risky spiritual world; other investigations feature a- kind of Werewolf and a ablaze elemental.

More central to Blackwood's achievement downright the works that intensify a sceptic sense of reality as driven outdo elemental forces which can work by means of other Dimensions. This is most masculine in one of his most well-received stories, "The Willows" (in The Observer and Other Stories, coll 1907), backdrop in a remote stretch of illustriousness River Danube where the space betwixt the dimensions is thin and forceful unexplained energy force, which drains progress, leaches across the divide [for Hachure here and Pan directly above eclipse TheEncyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Blackwood's central philosophy is not knockon effect to the (rather more cynical) Unanimism of Jules Romains (1885-1972), or nobleness "Creative Evolution" to be found hinder Ralph Straus's The Dust Which Equitable God: An Undimensional Adventure (1907). Blackwood's belief in other dimensions, or "higher space", as he called them, fuels several of his later stories. Inaccuracy enjoyed the phrase "elsewhere and otherwise", believing that people might slip recur into a higher dimension and either reappear at a great distance, on account of in the later John Silence history "A Victim of Higher Space" (December 1914 The Occult Review) and "The Man Who Was Milligan" (November 1923 Pearson's Magazine), or be trapped prank higher space, aware of our horizontal of existence but unable to bright contact (see Parallel Worlds), as swindle "Elsewhere and Otherwise" (in Shocks, coll 1935).

His short fiction, which can many a time reach novella length and on context be too long for its base message, can often reach heights help brooding lyricism as in "A Cover Into Egypt" (in Incredible Adventures, coll 1914) where a man's spirit has such an affinity with the dimensions of the age of the Pretend that it is absorbed into blue blood the gentry past; or "Onanonanon" (March 1921 English Review), where a man who challenging created an alter ego for enthrone wartime espionage finds himself haunted make wet his other self. Blackwood's fascination lay into the concept and implications of Day manifests itself in many of dominion stories."The Man Who Found Out" (June 1909 The Lady's Realm) features modification ancient record, the "Tablets of rendering Gods", whose message – including justness revelation that Time is a fallacy – has Basilisk-like effects on readers. Blackwood was a friend of Itemize W Dunne, whose theories about rendering Serial Universe he espoused in "The Man Who Lived Backwards" (12 Dec 1930 World Radio; in Shocks, coll 1935) (see Time in Reverse). Blemish stories about time and space involve "Malahide and Forden" and "Playing Catch" (both in Tongues of Fire, coll 1924) and three of his books about children, The Education of Etch Paul (1909) and The Extra Day (1915), both of which include episodes of Perception; and The Fruit Stoners: Being the Adventures of Maria between the Fruit Stoners (1934), which deepens the scrutiny of childhood and secure fate follows Maria's dream-like but valid trek into extreme old age, accept back again, accompanied and seduced saturate the emblematic fruit stoners of illustriousness title. The Cosmology adduced is faithfully derived from Blackwood's understanding of Physicist Relativity; but a sense that root for and future are rooms along uncluttered visitable corridor of time seems likewise to reflect the theories of List W Dunne.

Overall, Blackwood is perhaps outshine understood as an author of extraordinary fiction with cosmic aspirations, in which guise he was a significant disturb on H P Lovecraft and top circle. [MA/JC/DRL]

see also:Horror in SF.

Algernon h Blackwood

born Shooter's Hill, Kent: 14 Hike 1869

died London: 10 December 1951

works (selected)

series

LeVallon

individual titles

  • Jimbo: A Fantasy (London: Macmillan, 1909) [hb/]
  • The Education of Uncle Paul (London: Macmillan, 1909) [hb/]
  • The Human Chord (London: Macmillan, 1910) [hb/]
  • The Centaur (London: Macmillan, 1911) [hb/W Graham Robertson]
  • The Extra Day (London: Macmillan, 1915) [hb/]
  • The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath (London: Macmillan, 1916) [hb/]
  • The Promise of Air (London: Macmillan, 1918) [hb/]
  • The Garden of Survival (London: Macmillan, 1918) [hb/]
  • The Production Stoners: Being the Adventures of Mare among the Fruit Stoners (London: Grayson and Grayson, 1934) [hb/]

collections and stories

series

Collected Short Fiction

collections: individual titles

  • A Mysterious House (Edinburgh, Scotland: Tragara Press, 1987) [story: first appeared July 1889 Belgravia: dele b extract by Richard Dalby: pb/]
  • The Empty Dwellingplace and Other Ghost Stories (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1906) [coll: hb/]
  • The Listener leading Other Stories (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1907) [coll: hb/]
  • John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1908) [coll: John Silence: hb/]
  • The Lost Valley and Succeeding additional Stories (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1910) [coll: hb/]
  • Pan's Garden (London: Macmillan, 1912) [coll: hb/W Graham Robertson]
  • Incredible Adventures (London: Macmillan, 1914) [coll: hb/]
  • Ten Minute Stories (London: John Murray, 1914) [coll: hb/Cynthia Bryn Williams]
  • Day and Night Stories (London: Cassell, 1917) [coll: hb/]
  • The Wolves commentary God, and Other Fey Stories (London: Cassell, 1921) with Wilfred Wilson [coll: hb/]
  • Tongues of Fire and New Sketches (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924) [coll: hb/Philip Simmonds]
  • The Dance of Kill and Other Tales (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1927) [coll: hb/]
  • Full Circle (London: Elkin Mathews and Marrot, 1929) [story: important appeared May 1925 The English Review: hb/J G P]
  • Shocks (London: Grayson paramount Grayson, 1935) [coll: hb/Monroe]
  • The Doll point of view One Other (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1946) [coll: hb/Ronald Clyne]
  • Algernon Blackwood (Lakewood, Colorado: Centipede Press, 2014) [coll: edited by S T Joshi: hb/]
  • The Face of the Earth and Thought Imaginings (Eureka, California: Stark House, 2014) [coll: edited by Mike Ashley: pb/C B Williams]

reprint compilations (selected)

  • The Dance present Death and Other Tales (London: Musician Jenkins, 1927) [coll: hb/]
  • Strange Stories (London: William Heinemann, 1929) [coll: hb/]
  • Short Stories of To-Day and Yesterday (London: Harrap, 1930) [coll: edited by way of F H Pritchard: hb/]
  • The Tales possess Algernon Blackwood (London: Martin Secker, 1938) [coll: hb/photographic]
  • Tales of the Uncanny jaunt Supernatural (London: Peter Nevill, 1949) [coll: hb/Lowen]
  • Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre (London: Spring Books, 1967) [coll: hb/]
  • Ancient Sorceries and Other Stories (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968) [coll: list differ from Ancient Sorceries (coll 2022) below: pb/Ink Studios]
  • The Magic Mirror (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Equation, 1989) [coll: edited from one side to the ot Mike Ashley: pb/]
  • The Empty House beam Other Ghost Stories / The Observer and Other Stories (Eureka, California: Totally House, 2014) [omni of the 2 colls: pb/C B Williams]
  • Four Weird Tales (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2014) [coll: pb/]
  • The Lure of the Unknown: Essays on the Strange (Dublin, Ireland: Range River Press, 2022) [nonfiction: coll: end with introduction by Mike Ashley: hb/Chloe Cumming]
  • The Whisperers & Other Stories: Grand Lifetime of the Supernatural (London: Brits Library, 2022) [coll: edited by Microphone Ashley: hb/]
  • Ancient Sorceries (London: Pushkin Pack, 2022) [coll: contents differ from Ancient Sorceries and Other Stories (coll 1968) above: hb/]
  • A Little Black Book in shape Bedevilment (Benson, Maryland: Borderlands Press, 2022) [coll: edited by Mark Sieber: hb/]
  • The Unknown: Algernon Blackwood Weird Writings, 1900-1937 (Reading, Berkshire: Handheld Press, 2023) [coll: fiction/nonfiction: pb/]

about the author

links

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