New Foxwell ebooks: WWI and short story collections.

I have new ebooks available of two of my books:

In Their Own Words: American Women in World War I presents first-person accounts by American women who served in World War I. Combating restrictions on the duties they could undertake, these women often faced discrimination, danger, and even death in their desire to serve their country, the men in combat, and the civilians suffering the effects of war. Their roles included ambulance driver, canteen worker, clerk, entertainer, fingerprint expert, librarian, nurse, physician, relief worker, reporter, stenographer, and switchboard operator. Cover design by Karen Jackson.

• No Man's Land and Other Stories is a collection of my (mostly historical) mystery short stories (although it does include an affectionate pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson). It includes "No Man's Land" (Agatha winner, Macavity nominee) and "Keeper of the Flame" (first-prize winner, 2003 Cape Fear Crime Festival Short Story Contest). Settings range from the Civil War and the Titanic to World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, including figures such as Dorothea Dix, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and Oscar Wilde. Cover design by Karen Jackson.

 

Conference "Lippincott's Legacy" (May 2015).

(Photos: Arthur Conan Doyle, left, and Oscar Wilde, NYPL)

The Omaha conference "Lippincott's Legacy" on May 29–30 will celebrate the 125th anniversary of the publication of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Scheduled papers include:

• "Irene Adler, the Atypical Criminal" (Kelly Wieczorek and Tanushree Ghosh, U Nebraska)
• "Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis" (Thomas Goetz)
• "Doyle's The Sign of Four and Victorian Sensation Fiction" (Valerie Kolbinger, U South Dakota)
• "Sherlock Holmes, Entrepreneur" (Robert Bernier, U Nebraska)
• "The Sherlock Holmes Stories in American Newspapers" (Charles Johanningsmeier, U Nebraska)
• "Playing the Game and the Great Game" (Thomas E. Gouttierre, U Nebraska)

New! Collected Foxwell short stories.

Cover by Karen Jackson

Just out from Oconee Spirit Press (which has reissued the popular Sigrid Harald novels by Margaret Maron and early rarities by Carolyn Hart) is No Man's Land & Other Stories, an ebook collection of 12 of my (mostly historical) short stories. It includes two award winners ("No Man's Land" with WWI female ambulance drivers; "Keeper of the Flame" with a 19th-century lighthouse keeper); a story set on the Titanic ("Unsinkable"); three stories with Alice Roosevelt Longworth and her snide comments about her cousin, Franklin ("Come Flit by Me," "Alice and the Agent of the Hun," "Artistic License"); two stories inspired by Oscar Wilde ("A Roman of No Importance"; "Lady Windermere's Flan"); and some previously unpublished works (such as "Death in Blue and Gray," a Civil War story set in Washington, DC; and "An Epidemic Proportion," set during the 1918 flu pandemic). I provide an introduction that explains the background of the stories.

Ebook platforms:
• Kindle 
• Kobo
• Nook

Whistler and Collins.

Collins's Woman in
White with Whistler's
White Girl on cover

The online edition of the letters of artist James McNeill Whistler features a few letters concerning attempts to link Whistler's The White Girl (1862) to Wilkie Collins's Woman in White (1859–60), a letter that reveals that Whistler liked Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Golden Calf (1883), and witty correspondence from Oscar Wilde. It looks like the 1906 letter from Arthur Conan Doyle is not yet online.

Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" this week on BBC Radio 7.

Oscar Wilde, ca. 1882. Library
of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division

This week on BBC Radio 7, Lord Arthur Savile is told that he is destined to commit a murder, so he decides to attend to it—right away. Michael Maloney reads Oscar Wilde's lively work. Go here for the schedule or to listen online; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Read W. B. Yeats's review of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891): "Surely we have in this story ["Lord Arthur"] something of the same spirit that filled Ireland once with gallant, irresponsible ill-doing..."

Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime on stage in DC.

Through March 21st, the Washington Stage Guild is performing in Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, in which his lordship, receiving the news that he is destined to commit a murder, decides to get it out of the way immediately. Go here for the Washington Post review; here to read W. B. Yeats's review of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891).

About the image: Oscar Wilde, ca. 1882. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Dorothy L. Sayers and modernism.

Aoife Leahy discusses modernist influences on Dorothy L. Sayers, such as Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde, in The Victorian Approach to Modernism in the Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers (2009).

About the image: The late Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1973).

Conan Doyle, Milne, Washington score big at Christie's auction.

Christie's December 4th auction of fine printed books and manuscripts reaped the following results:

• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), $9375 (estimated at $4000–6000).

• Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (1925), $2250

• William Faulkner, These 13 (1931, which includes the mystery-related "A Rose for Emily"), $1063

• A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young (1924), $21,250 (estimated at $3000–4000) and Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), $32,500 (estimated at $5000–7000)

• George Washington, letter to his nephew Bushrod Washington (1787), $3.2 million
  

• Oscar Wilde, Poems (1892), $12,500 (estimated at $4000–6000)

• Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902), $4000
  

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Parisian commemorations for Oscar Wilde.

The Bunburyist must note what D. C. Rose, president of the Societe Oscar Wilde en France, has advised: The Paris City Council will soon be naming a street or square after Wilde in response to a poll. Rose also notes that the society is organizing a ceremony on July 19 to mark the centenary of the transfer of Wilde's remains to Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

About the photo: Oscar Wilde, ca. 1882. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

A mystery by Oscar Wilde this week on BBC Radio 7.

Oscar Wilde's "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," in which Lord Arthur is told that he is destined to be a murderer and thus decides he better get that out of the way, is featured this week on BBC Radio 7. Go here for the schedule or to listen.