Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life

Rating:
Summary: Still alive
Review: It was about time. Blackwood, who died just over fifty years ago, was one of the great twentieth-century masters of the weird tale; H P Lovecraft, no less, called his long story "The Willows" possibly the greatest weird tale ever written, and S T Joshi has said that his book Incredible Adventures may be the greatest weird collection. The more one reads of Blackwood, the more one is amazed at his present obscurity - an obscurity which may at last be starting to lift. The product of twenty years' research, including interviews with several people who knew Blackwood personally, this first ever full-length biography is an amazing achievement, particularly in view of Blackwood's cavalier attitude towards personal possessions, including documents. Ashley's extraordinary life of this extraordinary man details eighty-two years encompassing two world wars (during the first of which Blackwood served as a secret agent in Switzerland), innumerable travels round the world, near-starvation and vagrancy in New York, the high society of the 1920s and salvation by burning sausage during the London Blitz. Though clumsily written, the book's narrative is commendably clear; Blackwood was an immensely pleasant and sociable individual who met and befriended a great many people in the course of a long and eventful life, but although I raced through his biography I never once had to check back to find out who was who. Ashley perhaps harps a little too much on the fact that Blackwood originated the term "Starlight Express", but he does so for a better reason than mere topicality - he's trying to emphasise Blackwood's continuing (perhaps growing) relevance to the present. As S T Joshi remarked at the end of his chapter on Blackwood in The Weird Tale, Blackwood is a writer waiting to be discovered. Ashley's book should shorten the wait considerably.

Rating:
Summary: Still alive
Review: It was about time. Blackwood, who died just over fifty years ago, was one of the great twentieth-century masters of the weird tale; H P Lovecraft, no less, called his long story "The Willows" possibly the greatest weird tale ever written, and S T Joshi has said that his book Incredible Adventures may be the greatest weird collection. The more one reads of Blackwood, the more one is amazed at his present obscurity - an obscurity which may at last be starting to lift. The product of twenty years' research, including interviews with several people who knew Blackwood personally, this first ever full-length biography is an amazing achievement, particularly in view of Blackwood's cavalier attitude towards personal possessions, including documents. Ashley's extraordinary life of this extraordinary man details eighty-two years encompassing two world wars (during the first of which Blackwood served as a secret agent in Switzerland), innumerable travels round the world, near-starvation and vagrancy in New York, the high society of the 1920s and salvation by burning sausage during the London Blitz. Though clumsily written, the book's narrative is commendably clear; Blackwood was an immensely pleasant and sociable individual who met and befriended a great many people in the course of a long and eventful life, but although I raced through his biography I never once had to check back to find out who was who. Ashley perhaps harps a little too much on the fact that Blackwood originated the term "Starlight Express", but he does so for a better reason than mere topicality - he's trying to emphasise Blackwood's continuing (perhaps growing) relevance to the present. As S T Joshi remarked at the end of his chapter on Blackwood in The Weird Tale, Blackwood is a writer waiting to be discovered. Ashley's book should shorten the wait considerably.