The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires and Werewolves (Paperback Library, 1970) is an anonymously edited collection of nine stories. all to do with (as the title suggests) vampires and werewolves. It is purportedly edited by Barnabas and Quentin Collins, the (fictional) vampire and werewolf characters, respectively, of the popular daytime television show, and it includes a six page introduction signed ..read more

My friend and fellow Tolkienist Mike Foster passed away a few days ago, after a long illness. I can't recall how far back out association goes, probably to the 1987 Mythcon in Milwaukee, where I met a large number of people for the first time. I saw Mike and his wife Jo at a number of other conventions, and also when I went to guest lecture at one of Mike's various Tolkien classes at Illinois ..read more

The same source of the E.R. Eddison letter discussed in my last blog post contains some letters from Clark Ashton Smith that I found quite interesting. Here is give a long quote from the first of Smith's letters, dated 10 November 1932:<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ..read more

It’s always nice to learn an author’s answer to a vexing question about their works. A new (to me) small cache of letters from the early 1930s provided some enlightenment. In the early 1930s a young American fan sent letters to some of his favorite authors of fantasy and science fiction, asking for autographs, and sometimes making comments and asking questions. This young fan, Richard Wolford ..read more

In the 16 January 1938 issue of the London newspaper The Observer, there was a query, signed "Habit", from Queensway, asking whether J.R.R. Tolkien might be persuaded to discuss more about his book The Hobbit, published four months earlier. Habit also noted:On mentioning the hairy-footed hobbit, rather like a rabbit, to one of my contemporaries, I was amazed to hear her shudder. She said she ..read more

It must have been around five years ago that Tom Shippey asked me if I knew anything about There and Back Again (1932) by C.H. Dodd, as a potential influence on The Hobbit.  I think he had been asked the question himself at some conference, and thought I might know. But I didn't.  Well, it turns out that the book itself is quite rare, and it took years for me to find a copy to read.  And the ..read more

I have been reading the recently published, 600+ paged tome, of The Letters of Shirley Jackson, edited by her son Laurence Jackson Hyman, and a couple of references to Tolkien are worth noting. Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) is remembered for the 1948 folk-horror story, "The Lottery," published in The New Yorker, and for weird novels such as The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived ..read more

Okay, since Google's Feedburner is closing down their email subscription function for blogs, I have migrated this blog's subscriber list to "follow.it".  If it worked right, subscribers should get this post as usual, but from a different source.  I do know that some supposedly redundant email addresses were purged during the move, so if you were on the list, and want to still be on the list ..read more

When Del Rey published Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara in April 1977, they launched it with an unprecedented marketing campaign for a fantasy novel. Thus it reached the bestseller lists, a triumph of marketing over content.  Other publishers saw the opportunity for large sales of fantasy novels.  I remember a handful of books that were omnipresent for many months in every bookstore I visited ..read more

Most blogs I'm involved with have a "Follow by email" option. The "Follow by email" function worked (fine) via Google's Feedburner since I started using it.  Google is eliminating Feedburner in July, which means I have had to find an alternate source. Over the next week I will be transferring this following-by-email function ON THIS BLOG to follow.it. I already have seen anomalies (with other ..read more