James Hadley Chase was born in London and initially worked as a book wholesaler. His real name was Rene Brabazon Raymond, also writing under the name of Raymond Marshall. His first novel, written apparently over some weekends in 1938 was "No Orchids for Miss Blandish", which achieved remarkable popularity, was made into a film in 1948, toured as a stage play and was remade as a film entitled Grissom in 1971.
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843
Late Victorian Gothic Tales (Oxford World's Classics)
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Non-Fiction | 30 September 2008
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The Victorian fin de siecle has many associations: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships.
This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era.
The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843.
Lodge is a fan of the classics. This is apparent in his choice to begin each chapter with an excerpt from authors such as Henry James, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, though more contemporary authors like Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess are slipped in every so often. And arguably, it was a wise choice of Lodge's to use classics as his examples if the beginning writer is his target audience so as to transmit a sense of what is conventional before launching off into magic realism.
