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Nights of the Round Table
NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE is one of the last remaining completely forgotten ghost story collections of the 1920s, possibly because copies of the original book publication have, over the years, been virtually impossible to find. However, the twelve stories in this collection well justify a place alongside those written by E. F. Benson, A. M. Burrage, H. R. Wakefield, and Eleanor Scott, and their author, Margery Lawrence, possessed a story-telling skill comparable to each of those more famous writers.
213 pages, Hardcover
First published December 11, 1998
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348 people want to read
About the author
Margery Lawrence
56 books15 followersMargery Harriet Lawrence (alternate pen names: Jerome Latimer, Margery H. Lawrence) was an English romantic fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and detective fiction author who specialized in ghost stories.
Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.
Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.
Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).
The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a timeslip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
In the foreword to Ferry Over Jordan (Psychic Book Club, 1944), Lawrence explains that during the latter part of 1941 she had written a further group of articles on Spiritualism for Psychic News. It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943. The book was intended to be a primer on the much-discussed subject of Spiritualism. Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years:
"My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers. They were found precisely where he said--and from that moment I became deeply interested in what, throughout this book, I have called the "Other Side". Somewhere that man was obviously still alive! Somewhere he was thinking of us, anxious to help, caring what happened; in a word, he was still alive somewhere, and I was determined to find out where" [foreword, p. 5].
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery...]
Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.
Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.
Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).
The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a timeslip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.
In the foreword to Ferry Over Jordan (Psychic Book Club, 1944), Lawrence explains that during the latter part of 1941 she had written a further group of articles on Spiritualism for Psychic News. It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943. The book was intended to be a primer on the much-discussed subject of Spiritualism. Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years:
"My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers. They were found precisely where he said--and from that moment I became deeply interested in what, throughout this book, I have called the "Other Side". Somewhere that man was obviously still alive! Somewhere he was thinking of us, anxious to help, caring what happened; in a word, he was still alive somewhere, and I was determined to find out where" [foreword, p. 5].
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery...]
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July 4, 2023PLACEHOLDER REVIEW:
"Morag-Of-The-Cave" is a thoroughly Gaelic story about a strange, beautiful young woman who who does not take a partner from the inhabitants of her small fishing town, but instead seems entranced by other options - which ends disastrously for her, her child, and the man who does love her. This is told with some wonderful Irish dialect that really captures the lilt and dance of the speakers, and contains a genre element that both looks backwards to folklore, and forwards to a notorious New England seacoast town and its inhabitants. Well done. We presented it on PSEUDOPOD if you'd like to hear it: here.
I downgraded Margery Lawrence's "Robin's Rath" on this re-read, but this tale of a new landowner who dismisses town "superstition" about clearing a patch of wild ground to build a shortcut, and is then confronted by a mysterious groundskeeper, while overly familiar, is effective (small note - technically *not* a ghost story). What's interesting is the prim and coded way the story intimates sexual passion/desire, while still retaining its "comeuppance" ending. Again, presented on PSEUDOPOD for your enjoyment: here.
"The Golfer's Story: The Fifteenth Green" is one of Margery Lawrence's NIGHT OF THE ROUND TABLE pieces (group gets together and someone tells a true story that happened to them, or someone they know) and falls into that strange sub-sub-genre, the "weird golf story" (see also H.R. Wakefield "The 17th Hole At Duncaster" which this story is very similar to, in general conception if not detail). A 9 hole golf course on the Southern coast of England wants to expand, but the only available land is a bleak, windy promontory into the ocean on which lives an old fisherman in his tumbledown shack. The Fisherman (who has a reputation with the locals for witchcraft and dubious dealings with "things from the sea" doesn't take kindly to the offer of money to move and, after cursing the course owners, disappears as a possible suicide. And the course is built and the Fifteenth hole proves an uncanny challenge to everyone, and finally a fatal one to the man who motivated the land grab. Now, a weird story and golf don't naturally seem to go together but (again), much like the Wakefield story, this seems to be a conscious attempt to combine the "classic English ghost tale" of M.R. James (all building suspense, malignant atmosphere, attention to landscape & setting, a boat that is or isn't there, and a half-glimpsed, awful "trailing" thing waiting in the sand trap) with a modern setting (that most benign and ordered setting for leisure, the golf course). And, it works - pretty much on par (sorry) with the Wakefield. Would make a good BBC adaptation! And, yes, presented on Pseudopod: here.
In “The Portrait of Comtesse X (The Concierge's Tale)” an Innkeeper tells of one of his renters - a poor but talented painter, descended from some well-off family but now (due to some unvoiced event in his past), rejected by his family and now ekeing out a meager living. One day he evidences a profound ability at the focusing of his willpower, a power he rarely exercises, but this corresponds to the return into his life of his childhood love, long thought lost to him and now a lady of some wealth, who requests that he paints her portrait. But said portrait is for her upcoming marriage, which our painter was not told, and she cruelly casts him aside upon completion of the task, leading the painter to focus his will on revenge.... Well, there's nothing technically wrong with this story, as the milieu and characters are well drawn (I liked the Innkeeper and his proud wife who he loves dearly) but it also takes a lot of time going exactly where you think it's going to. Not bad but not really noteworthy, either.
“The Priest's Story: How Pan Came To Little Ingleton” (aka “Mr. Minchin’s Midsummer”) has a new, small town clergyman (of the joy-denying stripe, the kind who bans dancing and movie theaters as “sinful”) run afoul of a sharp rustic (see title) whom engages him in some debate about religion and blasphemy. Later, the clergyman finds himself at a Mass in his own church, delivered by the charismatic individual and attended by not only his congregation but by various supernatural nature spirits, where he extols the virtues of a Christianity that remembers the old Gods and still includes joy and nature in its conceptions. Not a horror story at all, more a gentle fantasy in that thoughtful, pro-pagan British mode that attempts to meet Christianity half-way. Not bad
"Morag-Of-The-Cave" is a thoroughly Gaelic story about a strange, beautiful young woman who who does not take a partner from the inhabitants of her small fishing town, but instead seems entranced by other options - which ends disastrously for her, her child, and the man who does love her. This is told with some wonderful Irish dialect that really captures the lilt and dance of the speakers, and contains a genre element that both looks backwards to folklore, and forwards to a notorious New England seacoast town and its inhabitants. Well done. We presented it on PSEUDOPOD if you'd like to hear it: here.
I downgraded Margery Lawrence's "Robin's Rath" on this re-read, but this tale of a new landowner who dismisses town "superstition" about clearing a patch of wild ground to build a shortcut, and is then confronted by a mysterious groundskeeper, while overly familiar, is effective (small note - technically *not* a ghost story). What's interesting is the prim and coded way the story intimates sexual passion/desire, while still retaining its "comeuppance" ending. Again, presented on PSEUDOPOD for your enjoyment: here.
"The Golfer's Story: The Fifteenth Green" is one of Margery Lawrence's NIGHT OF THE ROUND TABLE pieces (group gets together and someone tells a true story that happened to them, or someone they know) and falls into that strange sub-sub-genre, the "weird golf story" (see also H.R. Wakefield "The 17th Hole At Duncaster" which this story is very similar to, in general conception if not detail). A 9 hole golf course on the Southern coast of England wants to expand, but the only available land is a bleak, windy promontory into the ocean on which lives an old fisherman in his tumbledown shack. The Fisherman (who has a reputation with the locals for witchcraft and dubious dealings with "things from the sea" doesn't take kindly to the offer of money to move and, after cursing the course owners, disappears as a possible suicide. And the course is built and the Fifteenth hole proves an uncanny challenge to everyone, and finally a fatal one to the man who motivated the land grab. Now, a weird story and golf don't naturally seem to go together but (again), much like the Wakefield story, this seems to be a conscious attempt to combine the "classic English ghost tale" of M.R. James (all building suspense, malignant atmosphere, attention to landscape & setting, a boat that is or isn't there, and a half-glimpsed, awful "trailing" thing waiting in the sand trap) with a modern setting (that most benign and ordered setting for leisure, the golf course). And, it works - pretty much on par (sorry) with the Wakefield. Would make a good BBC adaptation! And, yes, presented on Pseudopod: here.
In “The Portrait of Comtesse X (The Concierge's Tale)” an Innkeeper tells of one of his renters - a poor but talented painter, descended from some well-off family but now (due to some unvoiced event in his past), rejected by his family and now ekeing out a meager living. One day he evidences a profound ability at the focusing of his willpower, a power he rarely exercises, but this corresponds to the return into his life of his childhood love, long thought lost to him and now a lady of some wealth, who requests that he paints her portrait. But said portrait is for her upcoming marriage, which our painter was not told, and she cruelly casts him aside upon completion of the task, leading the painter to focus his will on revenge.... Well, there's nothing technically wrong with this story, as the milieu and characters are well drawn (I liked the Innkeeper and his proud wife who he loves dearly) but it also takes a lot of time going exactly where you think it's going to. Not bad but not really noteworthy, either.
“The Priest's Story: How Pan Came To Little Ingleton” (aka “Mr. Minchin’s Midsummer”) has a new, small town clergyman (of the joy-denying stripe, the kind who bans dancing and movie theaters as “sinful”) run afoul of a sharp rustic (see title) whom engages him in some debate about religion and blasphemy. Later, the clergyman finds himself at a Mass in his own church, delivered by the charismatic individual and attended by not only his congregation but by various supernatural nature spirits, where he extols the virtues of a Christianity that remembers the old Gods and still includes joy and nature in its conceptions. Not a horror story at all, more a gentle fantasy in that thoughtful, pro-pagan British mode that attempts to meet Christianity half-way. Not bad
September 22, 2019
Nights of the Round Table is a delightful and compelling collection of short fiction. The characters were well crafted, and the prose kept me connected and pulled me along. “Robin's Rath” is an excellent Green Man story containing the usual warnings regarding letting the old places in nature remain as they are. This occupies an interesting space slightly more explicit than The Great God Pan, but I also want the version of this written by Livia Llewellyn.
“The Woozle” was a delightful bogeyman story. “The Fifteenth Green” is the best use I’ve seen of golf and horror, while also indicting the excesses of development. “How Pan Came to Little Ingleton” is a humorously blasphemous tale of how the big tent of the Christian church is large enough to provide a home to the littler and older gods. Something akin to “Young Goodman Brown” if the Goodman had learned humility instead. “Death Valley” is reminiscent of “The Damned Thing” but significantly paler. “The Curse of the Stillborn” has some nice segments about fear of the dark.
“Morag-of-the-Cave” is an evocative tale of lovers from the sea that predates that fateful visit to Innsmouth by over a decade. But this version contains enough heat that Howie would have broken into a sweat. “The White Cat” is a grotesque revenge tale, with a number of the foul deeds just off screen. “The Haunted Saucepan” is a delightfully odd tale that is one part M.R. James with a dash of P.G. Wodehouse -- altogether a wonderful lid to seal this collection.
“The Woozle” was a delightful bogeyman story. “The Fifteenth Green” is the best use I’ve seen of golf and horror, while also indicting the excesses of development. “How Pan Came to Little Ingleton” is a humorously blasphemous tale of how the big tent of the Christian church is large enough to provide a home to the littler and older gods. Something akin to “Young Goodman Brown” if the Goodman had learned humility instead. “Death Valley” is reminiscent of “The Damned Thing” but significantly paler. “The Curse of the Stillborn” has some nice segments about fear of the dark.
“Morag-of-the-Cave” is an evocative tale of lovers from the sea that predates that fateful visit to Innsmouth by over a decade. But this version contains enough heat that Howie would have broken into a sweat. “The White Cat” is a grotesque revenge tale, with a number of the foul deeds just off screen. “The Haunted Saucepan” is a delightfully odd tale that is one part M.R. James with a dash of P.G. Wodehouse -- altogether a wonderful lid to seal this collection.
July 16, 2023
• January: The Occultist's Story: Vlasto's Doll ⭐⭐⭐
• February: The Poet's Story: Robin's Rath ⭐⭐⭐⭐
•March: The Hypnotist's Story: The Woozle ⭐⭐⭐
• April: The Barrister's Story: Floris and the Soldan's Daughter ⭐⭐⭐
•May: The Golfer's Story: The Fifteenth Green ⭐⭐⭐
•June: The Priest's Story: How Pan Came to Little Ingleton ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• July: The Soldier's Story: Death Valley ⭐⭐⭐
• August: The Egyptologist's Story: The Curse of the Stillborn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• September: My Own Story: The Fields of Jean-Jacques ⭐⭐⭐
• October: The Host's Story: Morag-of-the-Cave ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• November: The Superintendent's Story: The White Cat ⭐⭐⭐
• December: The Engineer's Story: The Haunted Saucepan ⭐⭐⭐
• February: The Poet's Story: Robin's Rath ⭐⭐⭐⭐
•March: The Hypnotist's Story: The Woozle ⭐⭐⭐
• April: The Barrister's Story: Floris and the Soldan's Daughter ⭐⭐⭐
•May: The Golfer's Story: The Fifteenth Green ⭐⭐⭐
•June: The Priest's Story: How Pan Came to Little Ingleton ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• July: The Soldier's Story: Death Valley ⭐⭐⭐
• August: The Egyptologist's Story: The Curse of the Stillborn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• September: My Own Story: The Fields of Jean-Jacques ⭐⭐⭐
• October: The Host's Story: Morag-of-the-Cave ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• November: The Superintendent's Story: The White Cat ⭐⭐⭐
• December: The Engineer's Story: The Haunted Saucepan ⭐⭐⭐
August 1, 2012
Ash Tree Press had done a singular service to the lovers of supernatural fiction when they had brought out this book, after it had practically vanished for almost 50 years. The introduction by Richard Dalby has been enormous and highly informative. But I would like to confine my review to my thoughts concerning the stories.
This book is all about stories that people tell after satisfactory dinners, apparently in accordance with some time-honoured “English” tradition. Unfortunately, either to make the stories more saleable or to conform to editorial expectations (since almost all these stories had seen prior publications in magazines during the 1920-s), several stories that should have been outstanding examples of psychological horror, were compelled to become rather pedestrian examples of supernatural horror. But let me gesticulate story-wise.
1. Vlasto’s Doll: A grim story that could have become precursor of all the spooky stories about the ventriloquist’s dummy eventually became an over-written story of dubiously supernatural revenge. Frankly speaking, the cover illustration by Paul Lowe is a lot more sinister than the actual story.
2. Robin’s Rath: Sentimental exploration of the beauty & terror of paganism (a popular theme, also encountered in several contemporary stories).
3. The Woozle: A terrifyingly realistic story of childhood fears, that became frivolously supernatural-oriented (along-with all other “pseudo-scientific flummeries” [to quote my knowledgeable friend] to ‘explain’ it).
4. Floris and the Soldan’s Daughter: Another brilliant story of obsession and a man’s descent into madness, utterly trashed by the uncalled-for imposition of supernatural at the last passage.
5. The Fifteenth Green: Mild precursor of HRW’s jewel-like “The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster”.
6. How Pan came to Little Ingleton: Rather light-hearted story with a moral lesson at the tail.
7. Death Valley: African mumbo-jumbo and all other routine-stuff (sometimes I miss “Lukundoo” so much!).
8. The Curse of the Stillborn: Good, compact story.
9. The Fields of Jean-Jacques: Drivel and dribble followed by the entirely predictable finish.
10. Morag-of-the-Cave: BEST story of the book and one of the most satisfactorily haunting Mythos-stories (although in this case the inspiration probably came not from Massachusetts but from the English coasts) that I have ever read.
11. The White Cat: If only the story was 4 pages long (rather than its actual 20 page length)!
12. The Haunted Saucepan: Sometimes the idea of haunting is taken to such silly extents that it becomes impossible to take the writer seriously, and this is exactly what happened with this story.
Overall, I would NOT like to return to this collection. And if you ever feel like inquisitive about after-dinner stories that can be told in darkening evenings, I would recommend you to read only one story: Neil Gaiman’s “October in the Chair”. It would stay with you forever, or at least longer than the memory of these stories that I have recounted just now.
This book is all about stories that people tell after satisfactory dinners, apparently in accordance with some time-honoured “English” tradition. Unfortunately, either to make the stories more saleable or to conform to editorial expectations (since almost all these stories had seen prior publications in magazines during the 1920-s), several stories that should have been outstanding examples of psychological horror, were compelled to become rather pedestrian examples of supernatural horror. But let me gesticulate story-wise.
1. Vlasto’s Doll: A grim story that could have become precursor of all the spooky stories about the ventriloquist’s dummy eventually became an over-written story of dubiously supernatural revenge. Frankly speaking, the cover illustration by Paul Lowe is a lot more sinister than the actual story.
2. Robin’s Rath: Sentimental exploration of the beauty & terror of paganism (a popular theme, also encountered in several contemporary stories).
3. The Woozle: A terrifyingly realistic story of childhood fears, that became frivolously supernatural-oriented (along-with all other “pseudo-scientific flummeries” [to quote my knowledgeable friend] to ‘explain’ it).
4. Floris and the Soldan’s Daughter: Another brilliant story of obsession and a man’s descent into madness, utterly trashed by the uncalled-for imposition of supernatural at the last passage.
5. The Fifteenth Green: Mild precursor of HRW’s jewel-like “The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster”.
6. How Pan came to Little Ingleton: Rather light-hearted story with a moral lesson at the tail.
7. Death Valley: African mumbo-jumbo and all other routine-stuff (sometimes I miss “Lukundoo” so much!).
8. The Curse of the Stillborn: Good, compact story.
9. The Fields of Jean-Jacques: Drivel and dribble followed by the entirely predictable finish.
10. Morag-of-the-Cave: BEST story of the book and one of the most satisfactorily haunting Mythos-stories (although in this case the inspiration probably came not from Massachusetts but from the English coasts) that I have ever read.
11. The White Cat: If only the story was 4 pages long (rather than its actual 20 page length)!
12. The Haunted Saucepan: Sometimes the idea of haunting is taken to such silly extents that it becomes impossible to take the writer seriously, and this is exactly what happened with this story.
Overall, I would NOT like to return to this collection. And if you ever feel like inquisitive about after-dinner stories that can be told in darkening evenings, I would recommend you to read only one story: Neil Gaiman’s “October in the Chair”. It would stay with you forever, or at least longer than the memory of these stories that I have recounted just now.
July 26, 2020
Margery Lawrence is an author of the weird and creepy that isn’t read much these days. I discovered her in a book called Monster, She Wrote, a fine compendium of women authors in the world of gothic, horror, and weird writing.
A really good mix of storytelling can be found here. Vlasto’s Doll is about a creepy performer with an even creepier life size doll that can talk, dance and sing. It can do this apparently without strings or any known mechanism. The Wozzle is a tale about the power of a child’s imagination to create demons. Robin’s Rath and How Pan Came to Little Ingleton tell how we should not mess with very old pagan entities (A touch perhaps of Arthur Machen here), and Morag-of-the-Cave is a Lovecraftian-like story about ghastly denizens of the deep.
But there are some great ghost stories here too. The Haunted Saucepan, despite what seems like a silly title, is one of the scariest ghost stories I’ve ever read. It’s a testament to the great writing of this author.
The title of this collection gets its name from the frame story: a group of friends get together to have dinner and swap stories. It’s a great way to spend an evening; to see who can out-spook who. Lawrence really attended such gatherings.
A really good mix of storytelling can be found here. Vlasto’s Doll is about a creepy performer with an even creepier life size doll that can talk, dance and sing. It can do this apparently without strings or any known mechanism. The Wozzle is a tale about the power of a child’s imagination to create demons. Robin’s Rath and How Pan Came to Little Ingleton tell how we should not mess with very old pagan entities (A touch perhaps of Arthur Machen here), and Morag-of-the-Cave is a Lovecraftian-like story about ghastly denizens of the deep.
But there are some great ghost stories here too. The Haunted Saucepan, despite what seems like a silly title, is one of the scariest ghost stories I’ve ever read. It’s a testament to the great writing of this author.
The title of this collection gets its name from the frame story: a group of friends get together to have dinner and swap stories. It’s a great way to spend an evening; to see who can out-spook who. Lawrence really attended such gatherings.
February 22, 2021
Margery Lawrence (1889-1969) is having an outstanding 2021. She is included in the canon-making Handheld Press anthology Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson. The story selected, "The Haunted Saucepan," is one of the book's real jewels, a masterpiece of the uncanny whose unpromising title contributes to reader complacency. It's a complacency Lawrench happily crushes with each subsequent turn of her screw.
Nights of the Round Table is a club story collection. Most members, regardless of their middle class profession, are conversant with the supernatural and happy to explore their personal experiences. Most of the tales are modest in scope, though Lawrence handles even small-scale weirdness with Jamesian suggestiveness.
Full: http://jayrothermel.blogspot.com/2021...
Nights of the Round Table is a club story collection. Most members, regardless of their middle class profession, are conversant with the supernatural and happy to explore their personal experiences. Most of the tales are modest in scope, though Lawrence handles even small-scale weirdness with Jamesian suggestiveness.
Full: http://jayrothermel.blogspot.com/2021...
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