Helen Eustis—author of the Edgar-winning The Horizontal Man (1946) and The Fool Killer (1954), friend of Carson McCullers, and ex-wife of Smith poet-professor Alfred Young Fisher—turns 92 today in New York City.
Courtesy of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, the 1884 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (with illustrations by Gustave Doré) has been digitized, as well as an 1875 French translation of the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé (with illustrations by famed painter and Mallarmé friend Edouard Manet).
On the Great War Fiction blog, George Simmers discusses the World War I background to Patrick Hamilton's Rope, the 1929 play based on the Leopold and Loeb case, which was later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. The play is on stage again at London's Almeida Theater.
For today, Rod Serling's 85th birthday as well as Christmas Day, let's remember the episode he wrote for The Twilight Zone, "Night of the Meek," starring Art Carney as an alcoholic department store Santa. Go here to watch it.
At the December 17th Sotheby's auction, a first edition of R. Austin Freeman's first detective work The Adventures of Romney Pringle (1902, written with James Pitcairn under the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown), sold for £1875 (approx. US$3030). Freeman is the creator of Dr. John Thorndyke and a pioneer in the Columbo school of storytelling (i.e., the reader knows the identity of the criminal at the outset of the narrative and follows the detective's investigation).
The latest mystery for beginning readers from author-illustrator Doug Cushman is Dirk Bones and the Mystery of the Missing Books, in which the intrepid reporter Dirk (I suspect a nod to Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt) investigates why the books by famous author Edgar Bleek are going missing.
The Art of the Bookstore features paintings by Gibbs M. Smith of—what else—bookshops. The usual suspects seem to be covered—for example, Laurence Ferlinghetti's City Lights in San Francisco, Powell's in Portland, Shakespeare & Co. in Paris—and it is also good to see icons such as Tattered Cover in Denver and Prairie Lights in Iowa, as well as one of my favorites, Green Apple, represented. But it is sad to see those that are no more—Cody's in Berkeley, CA; Chapters in Washington, DC (although Chapters may eventually reopen; go here for details).
This week on BBC Radio 7, Dr. Syn, Russell Thorndike's swashbuckling vicar, is back in The Further Adventures of Dr. Syn (1936), read by Rufus Sewell (Cold Comfort Farm, John Adams). Go here for the schedule or to listen.
Long before Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was Richard Marsh's A Spoiler of Men (1905), dubbed by the Morning Leader as "thoroughly gruesome and effective." Now republished by Valancourt Books, it joins Valancourt's other Marsh reprints such as The Beetle (1897) and The Seen and the Unseen (1900).
British author Penelope Fitzgerald (The Bookshop, Offshore, etc.) was born today in Lincoln in 1916. She died in 2000. Fitzgerald was the niece of Golden Age mystery writer Monsignor Ronald Knox (see Fitzgerald's book The Knox Brothers [1977] for her take on her uncle and her father, Punch editor Edmund Knox).
As noted by PhiloBiblos, "The Raven in the Frog Pond: Edgar Allan Poe and the City of Boston" opens at the Boston Public Library on December 17th. The festivities kick off with the latest chapter of the Great Poe Debate as to what city can claim the tortured writer as its own.
This week on BBC Radio 7: The program The Lady Detectives features Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady (1874–75), in which a wife attempts to clear her husband of the charge of murdering his first spouse; and detective Florence Cusack looks into "Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will" (1899) by L. T. Meade [Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith] and Robert Eustace [Dr. Eustace Robert Barton]. Also airing this week is Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael in The Virgin in the Ice. Go here for the schedule or to listen.
The Folio Club, which gets its name from a Poe story, is a new biannual literary magazine edited and published by an old friend of mine, Robert Pranzatelli, who is a publicist for Yale University Press. Indie cartoonist Onsmith designed the cover; contributors include Blondie songwriter Romy Ashby and poet Mark Saba.
Scottish writer-poet George MacDonald, primarily known for fantasy works including "The Light Princess" (1864), "The Golden Key" (1867), and At the Back of the North Wind (1871), was born today in Aberdeenshire in 1824. For his influence on C. S. Lewis, go here; for his friendship with Mark Twain, go here. MacDonald, who died in 1905, was the grandfather of Philip MacDonald, screenwriter and author of mysteries such as The Rasp (1924), Warrant for X (1938; filmed as 23 Paces to Baker Street, 1956), and The List of Adrian Messenger (1959; film 1963).
Zenith Jones Brown—aka Leslie Ford, David Frome, and Brenda Conrad and a descendant of the illustrious Calvert family of Maryland—was born today in Smith River, CA, in 1898. Her numerous mystery works include The By-Pass Murder (1932), The Strangled Witness (1934), Ill Met by Moonlight (1937), The Simple Way of Poison (1937), Three Bright Pebbles (1938), and The Girl from the Mimosa Club (1957, selected as one of Mystery Loves Company's Best Mysteries of the Century). She died in Baltimore in 1983.
In this December 4th broadcast of BBC Radio 4's Film Programme, Adrian Wootten discusses the "profound influence" of espionage master Eric Ambler on film and points out that 2009 marks Ambler's centenary.
The Harvard University Press blog discusses its new covers for works by Nathaniel Hawthorne that feature various renderings of the author, but they tend to appear as if Hawthorne has discovered the blow dryer (see sample at left).
Kate Sutherland of Kate's Book Blog pays tribute to Donald J. Sobol's super sleuth, Encyclopedia Brown, who debuted in 1963: "...I'm a lawyer and a law professor. Much is made of the mystical process by which students learn in first year law school how to 'think like a lawyer.' On reflection it occurs to me, with apologies to my first year law professors, that I may in fact have received my earliest lessons in how to think like a lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown."
