Conference on weird fiction scheduled.

Algernon Blackwood, NYPL

The conference "The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genres" will be held at the University of London on November 8, 2013. A keynote speaker is S. T. Joshi (who has done much work on H. P. Lovecraft). The conference call for papers mentions interest in papers on Lovecraft and similar writers (probably including Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Robert Louis Stevenson), but also indicates the intent to cover topics such as "modernism and the weird."

Jonathan Miller and an M. R. James ghost story.

Michael Hordern in
"Whistle and I'll Come
to You," BBC
Omnibus, 1968.

BFI Screenonline discusses Jonathan Miller's 1968 BBC version of the M. R. James ghost story "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" (1904). Michael Hordern stars in this creepy tale of a whistle found in a cemetery that brings unexpected results; you can watch the program here. The Guardian examines the 2010 remake with John Hurt here.

Not much mystery action at June 23rd Bloomsbury auction.

The June 23rd Bloomsbury auction that received press for the lack of interest in some of the Steinbeck items also displayed tepid attention to the mystery-related offerings:

• James Grady signed works, including books from the Condor series (Six Days of the Condor, etc.): Unsold.

• M. R. James, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: Unsold.

• Ross Macdonald, The Far Side of the Dollar, $300 (valued bet. $1000 and $1500); Sleeping Beauty, $150 (valued bet. $500 and $700) ; proof of The Instant Enemy, with "Boucher" written and circled in red pencil (probably critic-writer Anthony Boucher), $150; Self-Portrait, signed by Macdonald and Eudora Welty, $150.

• Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Copy owned by John Dos Passos, valued bet. $1200 and $1800: Unsold.

• Mary Roberts Rinehart, signed card: Unsold.

There was also a completely delightful inscribed copy of Christopher Morley's I Know a Secret for Dorothy Parker, in which Morley drew pixies (valued bet. $1200–1800, unsold).

Bloomsbury April 23rd book auction results.

Some highlights from Bloomsbury's April 23rd literature auction:

• First English edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy (1822; novel about a spy for George Washington during the Revolutionary War; Cooper's second novel): valued at £400–600, sold for £1300 (approximately $1900)
  

• First edition of M.R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), £550 (approximately $809)
  

• First serialized edition of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1935), valued at £60-80, sold for £360 (approximately $530)
  

• Signed copy of the autobiographical She Goes to War (1942) by Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters), £280 (approximately $412)
  

• Signed first edition of John le Carre's Call for the Dead (1961), £3000 (approximately $4414)
  

• Signed first edition of James Crumley's The Wrong Case (1975), £160 (approximately $235)
  

• First edition of Colin Dexter's The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977), £420 (approximately $618)
  

• First edition of Lindsey Davis's The Silver Pigs (1989), £170 (approximately $250)
  

Sadly, the copies of Leslie Charteris's The Saint vs. Scotland Yard and The Saint and Mr. Teal that I mentioned in this post went unsold (as did copies of Chandler's Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye).

The ghost stories of M. R. James.

There's an interesting discussion by Chris Power on the Guardian blog about the ghost stories of M. R. James (1862–1936). I especially like the one commentator who stated, "Someone once described to me the difference between Poe and M. R. James by saying 'In Poe, you reach out for your bedside lamp at night and it isn't there; in Mr. James, you reach out for your bedside lamp and something in the dark hands it to you.'" Brrrr.

Happy birthday, Carter Brown; M. R. James.

Naturalized Australian Alan Geoffrey Yates, better known as Carter Brown and a bunch of other pseudonyms, was born today in London in 1923. He churned out numerous paperback originals during his career, including Lament for a Lousy Lover (1960), Murder Is a Package Deal (1964), The Black Lace Hangover (1966), and So What Killed the Vampire (1966).

And writer and academic M. R. James was born today in Kent in 1862. Penguin has published two volumes of his ghost stories.