Elf Trap

by Francis Stevens

"The Elf Trap" is only further evidence that Francis Stevens was a teller of bright rather than dark tales. It was first published in Argosy, July 5, 1919, and reprinted in Fantastic Novels Magazine for November 1949. It's a long short story of twenty-one pages in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (2004) but one of the simplest of Stevens' stories to date. The structure of the story is somewhat complex however. In reading her work, I have come to expect that. Built like a puzzle box or assembled like a set of nesting wooden dolls, it includes a double framing device and the voices of two narrators. Relativity was in the news in 1919. Analytic cubism was a leading movement in art. It's no wonder that stories told from multiple viewpoints would make their way into modern literature. One of John Dos Passos' trilogy U.S.A., a modernist work to be sure, was in fact called 1919. That was no coincidence, either. Anyway, as you read "The Elf Trap," you wonder how this story will work itself out, where lies reality, and how a man's death can make for a happy ending. That ending is a mild surprise, and the story itself is a pleasant reading experience. I might add that it could have been written only by a woman.

76 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 28, 2008

About the author

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883–1948) was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy." Among her most famous books are Claimed (which H. P. Lovecraft called "One of the strangest and most compelling science fantasy novels you will ever read")[4] and the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear. Bennett also wrote an early dystopian novel, The Heads of Cerberus (1919).

Gertrude Mabel Barrows was born in Minneapolis in 1883. She completed school through the eighth grade, then attended night school in hopes of becoming an illustrator (a goal she never achieved). Instead, she began working as a stenographer, a job she held on and off for the rest of her life. In 1909 Barrows married Stewart Bennett, a British journalist and explorer, and moved to Philadelphia. A year later her husband died while on an expedition. With a new-born daughter to raise, Bennett continued working as a stenographer. When her father died toward the end of World War I, Bennett assumed care for her invalid mother.
During this time period Bennett began to write a number of short stories and novels, only stopping when her mother died in 1920. In the mid 1920s, she moved to California. Because Bennett was estranged from her daughter, for a number of years researchers believed Bennett died in 1939 (the date of her final letter to her daughter). However, new research, including her death certificate, shows that she died in 1948.

Reviews

[Tijana]

Samo na netu može da se desi da počnete s čitanjem očekujući roman, a ono bude pripovetka :/ Nadalje: ovo je pristojna varijanta na temu lika koji zađe u vilinski svet a da i ne primeti, dok drugi ljudi vide ružnu ali prividnu stvarnost. Samo... Stereotipi koji se koriste su baš problematični i ako se npr. gadite na Lavkraftov rasizam možete i ovo da preskočite.

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_El...

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather boring, but I gave it two stars because I enjoyed the ending. A few days of paradise can make average day situations seem like a nightmare once the pleasure and fun is over.

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, fun read. Listened to narration by Scott Miller via Apple Podcasts: Lost Sci-Fi