James Ghost Stories (4 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 148 pages. Sexton Blake / M R James' Ghost Stories / Jerome K Jerome / Evadne Price's "Jane" books / Beano & Dandy / Regimental Histories of the 1914-1918 War.

Booklet - Unbound Pages. Condition: Very Good. 8 pages, illustrated. With list of books. An authentic standalone article, extracted from a larger volume. Not a reprint or reproduction, but an original work in its own right. Supplied without title page or cover. Size: 14 x 21 cms. Multiple copies available this title. Category: Book & Magazine Collector; Cosmo Books : 28 years selling on ABE; 28 years of taking care of customers on ABE; A seller you can rely on.

The seven letters total 23pp, 12mo. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. The third letter, written from Hickleton on 7 January 1907, is in a secretarial hand, Halifax being 'laid up with Influenza' and 'utterly good for nothing'; it carries an autograph postscript by Russell at the head of the first page. The first letter (14 July 1900) invites Russell to fill the 'vacancy on the list of Clerical members of our E.C.U. Council'; Russell's acceptance is acknowledged in the second, which also discusses charges of 'disloyalty'. The third letter (7 January 1907) refers to 'the battle [.] on the Education question', which has 'only just begun [.] I think we want to construct a policy for ourselves, & if possible, carry the war into the enemy's country'. A week later, Halifax discusses a conference in Manchester, which he would like to attend, despite not feeling 'up to speaking at a public meeting'. The letter includes a two-page statement concerning Halifax's position on 'Undenominationalism' ('as ever the enemy'). Halifax has written to the Bishop of Manchester on the subject of education, and feels that 'we ought for one thing to insist that those who want Cowper Temple teaching should pay for it - just as it now seems to be admitted by every one that denominationalists have to pay for their own denominational teaching'. Halifax asks for Russell's and Canon Cleworth's views on the question, and the next two letters concern an attempt to arrange a meeting to discuss it, with reference to 'good' resolutions in Convocation. In the last letter (19 January 1908) Halifax states that he has been talking to 'Mr Hall' about 'the matter in question', and that, while 'he could not of course pledge the Union to any constitution [.] he feels - as much as I do - and as you express in your letter, how entirely the object is one which the Union ought to help'.

4pp, 12mo. On four loose leaves. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn, with minor traces of grey paper mount along edges on blank reverses. The poem is titled 'The Dream of Fine Editors | (after the dinner to J. N. Dunn. April 23rd. 1897)'. (At the time of the dinner the Scottish journalist James Nicol Dunn (1856-1919) was on the verge of being appointed editor of the Morning Post, a position he would hold from May 1897 to January 1905.) There is no record of the poem having been published, and it is likely to have been written for after-dinner recitation only. It is 72 lines long, arranged in 18 quatrains. It begins: 'I dreamed I walked the Street of Bouverie | Where are pale lamps that mock the sable night, | "The Halfpenny John", Bradbury et cie | And also "Black & White"' | Walking, I heard a voice behind me say: | "Not vainly are my Hours and minutes spent. | I have a scheme a cert. - can't fail to pay | Three hundred pounds per cent."' The voice is that of the first of the five editors to appear to Pain in the poem, Charles Norris Williamson (1859-1920), editor of 'Black and White': 'fair, frock-coated, tall, | Sanguine, erratic, with enquiring eye | [] | 'Twas he the earliest figure of our past | Who sowed the seed whereof we reap the flow'r'. Williamson departs ('With pince-nez gleaming like an angel's smile | Went C. N. Williamson'), to be replaced by the editor of 'Chapman's Magazine of Fiction': 'O Oswald Crawfurd [(1834-1909)], courtly, consular, | With Fleet Street's maidens circling raind abait'. The third editor is an unnamed 'snappy man [] | And short and sharp barked out his little day; | In all the converse of the C. M. G. | Save that he didn't stay.' The fourth editor 'who stammered, stared with a lack-lustre eye' is also unnamed. He is a disreputable editor: 'Took his own stories, took his sister's too, | Likewise his cousin's, and his aunt's as well. | Sometimes we print them still we're forced to do - | But "Hell!" we murmur, "Hell!"' The final editor is Dunn himself: 'The one that bragged the least and did the most, | Yet left a weekly illustrated place | To take a morning post. | And as I spoke with him, the dream went by, | Through garden windows came the dawning sun | And I was Barry Pain, and knew that I | Had dined with J. N. Dunn'. The poem ends with Pain asking pardon for drinking from 'a strictly "private" bottle': 'Contrition's tear-drop on my eye-lid starts - | Partially drunk, but like the curate's egg, | "Quite excellent in parts"'. See Pain's entry in the Oxford DNB.