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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 4, December 1944
Page 50
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50 FANTASY COMMENTATOR This-'n'-That The year 1944 has seen the publication of two new Poe editions which deserve more than a passing notice because of the beautiful illustrations they contain. The first of these volumes, Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, appeared early in the year under the able editorship of Louis Untermeyer, and was embellished with numerous lithographs by Hugo Steiner-Prag. Steiner-Prag is a well-known book-illustrator, and will doubtless be remembered by many as having added his talents to the supernatural novel The Golem some years back. This collection of Poe's poems was published by the Heritage Press at $3.50. More recently Random House issued a selection of twenty-seven Poe stories under the title Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, this likewise being still available at the publisher's price of $3.95. It contains an excellent introduction, by Hervey Allen, as well as thirty-nine beautiful wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. During the past five years Eichenberg has been responsible for the illustrations in no less than two dozen books, including juveniles and classics of the Nineteenth Century. Now at the age of forty-three, he has executed, in his twenty-six year career, more than five thousand drawings and some three hundred wood engravings---many of these for Limited Editions Club volumes. Still on the subject of Poe: the Modern Library omnibus of his complete works is of course still in print at $1.45. But, for those who prefer the best, your editor recommends The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe in the now out-of-print Doran edition, which is illustrated by the sensitive French artist Edmund Dulac. This volume contains twenty-eight magnificent full-page paintings in color, each supremely faithful in mood and tone to the atmosphere of the author's poems. In all Dulac has caught and pictured that otherworldliness of Poe, which, if not directly expressed, lies always just beyond the context... Britain furnishes the followers of fantasy with several new works of fiction; most interesting of the lot are doubtless Olaf Stapledon's two novels, Sirius and Old Man in New World. Anent the former, a blurb in Time and Tide may be quoted: "This subtle and powerful novel of Sirius, the sheepdog bred with human instincts and intelligence, and his adventures in the world of human society will be discussed for months." This novel is published by Secker & Warburg, and is priced at 8/6. We again turn to the same British publication for description of Stapledon's second, and shorter, effort: "A brilliant fantasy of the future. The peace has been lost after the Second World War. The revolution in Europe had resulted in communism in most countries, but in England and America after the first wild hopes the revolution was frustrated. The Third World War was imminent and mobilisation had begun, when a wave of "agnostic mysticism" possessed mankind and thus a new world order was born. In this unusual book we also witness the great pageant in celebration of the New World, coupled with the 'Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the First Generation of the New World'. We discover, too, that new propitious conditions are generating a new mentality, rather disturbing to the ageing revolutionaries who founded the new order." George Allen & Unwin are the publishers, and the price of the volume is 2/-. An autobiography of the fantasy-writer Lord Dunsany has recently been published by Jarrolds at 10/6; the title: While the Sirens Slept...a new writer, William Sanson, has authored a collection of allegorical and symbolical fantasies entitled Fireman Flower and Other Stories; 8/6, from the Hogarth Press....and Jeffrey Dell's News from Heaven (Cape, 7/6) is a wittily fantastic satire on the present war...English reviewers have high praise indeed for The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin; this is a full-length ghost story published by Gollancz for 7/6...how many readers remember Rupert T. Gould's interesting presentations of Fortean happenings, Oddities and Enigmas! Those who do will certainly enjoy his latest collection The Star Gazer Talks (Geoffrey Bles, 5/-); don't miss it! American contributions to interested bibliophiles are scantier: Rim of the Pit, by Hake Talbot (Simon & Schuster, $2) is a combination of murder, weird (continued on page 53)
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50 FANTASY COMMENTATOR This-'n'-That The year 1944 has seen the publication of two new Poe editions which deserve more than a passing notice because of the beautiful illustrations they contain. The first of these volumes, Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, appeared early in the year under the able editorship of Louis Untermeyer, and was embellished with numerous lithographs by Hugo Steiner-Prag. Steiner-Prag is a well-known book-illustrator, and will doubtless be remembered by many as having added his talents to the supernatural novel The Golem some years back. This collection of Poe's poems was published by the Heritage Press at $3.50. More recently Random House issued a selection of twenty-seven Poe stories under the title Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, this likewise being still available at the publisher's price of $3.95. It contains an excellent introduction, by Hervey Allen, as well as thirty-nine beautiful wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. During the past five years Eichenberg has been responsible for the illustrations in no less than two dozen books, including juveniles and classics of the Nineteenth Century. Now at the age of forty-three, he has executed, in his twenty-six year career, more than five thousand drawings and some three hundred wood engravings---many of these for Limited Editions Club volumes. Still on the subject of Poe: the Modern Library omnibus of his complete works is of course still in print at $1.45. But, for those who prefer the best, your editor recommends The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe in the now out-of-print Doran edition, which is illustrated by the sensitive French artist Edmund Dulac. This volume contains twenty-eight magnificent full-page paintings in color, each supremely faithful in mood and tone to the atmosphere of the author's poems. In all Dulac has caught and pictured that otherworldliness of Poe, which, if not directly expressed, lies always just beyond the context... Britain furnishes the followers of fantasy with several new works of fiction; most interesting of the lot are doubtless Olaf Stapledon's two novels, Sirius and Old Man in New World. Anent the former, a blurb in Time and Tide may be quoted: "This subtle and powerful novel of Sirius, the sheepdog bred with human instincts and intelligence, and his adventures in the world of human society will be discussed for months." This novel is published by Secker & Warburg, and is priced at 8/6. We again turn to the same British publication for description of Stapledon's second, and shorter, effort: "A brilliant fantasy of the future. The peace has been lost after the Second World War. The revolution in Europe had resulted in communism in most countries, but in England and America after the first wild hopes the revolution was frustrated. The Third World War was imminent and mobilisation had begun, when a wave of "agnostic mysticism" possessed mankind and thus a new world order was born. In this unusual book we also witness the great pageant in celebration of the New World, coupled with the 'Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the First Generation of the New World'. We discover, too, that new propitious conditions are generating a new mentality, rather disturbing to the ageing revolutionaries who founded the new order." George Allen & Unwin are the publishers, and the price of the volume is 2/-. An autobiography of the fantasy-writer Lord Dunsany has recently been published by Jarrolds at 10/6; the title: While the Sirens Slept...a new writer, William Sanson, has authored a collection of allegorical and symbolical fantasies entitled Fireman Flower and Other Stories; 8/6, from the Hogarth Press....and Jeffrey Dell's News from Heaven (Cape, 7/6) is a wittily fantastic satire on the present war...English reviewers have high praise indeed for The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin; this is a full-length ghost story published by Gollancz for 7/6...how many readers remember Rupert T. Gould's interesting presentations of Fortean happenings, Oddities and Enigmas! Those who do will certainly enjoy his latest collection The Star Gazer Talks (Geoffrey Bles, 5/-); don't miss it! American contributions to interested bibliophiles are scantier: Rim of the Pit, by Hake Talbot (Simon & Schuster, $2) is a combination of murder, weird (continued on page 53)
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