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The Library of the Lost

In Search of Forgotten Authors

by

Roger Dobson

 

Edited and with an Introduction

by Mark Valentine

 

with a Foreword, 'A Remarkable Man'

by Javier Marías

 

Why did W.B. Yeats want a hair from the head of Aleister Crowley, and how did the artist Althea Gyles get it for him? What was the terrible lesson learned by scholar and demonologist the Reverend Montague Summers? Why was Sherlock Holmes reticent about his college years? Which unlikely chronicler of the decadents numbered among his friends Christine Keeler, Sir Oswald Mosely, Colin Wilson and an assortment of beat poets?

 

This volume is a tribute to Roger Dobson (1954-2013), who had a keen eye for the strangest outposts of literature. The twenty essays offered here demonstrate why the eminent Spanish novelist Javier Marias described Dobson as ‘a remarkable man’, recondite and bookish. Readers will encounter kings, priests, tragic poets, dandies, and forgotten authors whose rare works should be better known. Several pieces track Arthur Machen’s characters through the great mystery of London, rediscovering their lairs and lost haunts, and there are vivid studies of M.P. Shiel, Bulwer Lytton, George Gissing, Jocelyn Brooke and others. The collection will delight all connoisseurs of fantastic, supernatural and outré literature.

 

Contents

'A Remarkable Man by Javier Marías', 'Introduction by Mark Valentine', 'The Mysterious Montague Summers', 'W.B. Yeats and The Golden Dawn', 'Sherlock Holmes: The Last Mystery', 'M.P. Shiel and Arthur Ransome', 'A Palimpsest of The Three Impostors', 'Julian Maclaren-Ross', 'Black Magic Against the Beast', '‘A Weird and Marvellous Pursuit’', 'Edward Bulwer-Lytton', 'John Gawsworth: King of Redonda', 'The Return of Prince Zaleski', 'The Wrenne Jarman Mystery', 'Terror By Night', 'The Book in Yellow', 'New Arabian Frights', 'Madam Satan', '‘A Trade of the Damned’', 'Lucian in the Labyrinth', 'The Weird World of Dennis Wheatley', 'Cartographer of Myth', 'A Checklist of the Writings of Roger Dobson'.

 

Review

'As soon as I had started reading, I grabbed pen and paper and started noting titles of various books and stories mentioned here that  wanted to read. When I'd finished Library of the Lost, the list numbered thirty-four, of which I only owned twelve. I bought three more immediately, and then after a second read, I purchased another three. I couldn't help myself. The real stuff