Current selling price
£2,000+.
Until the early 1970s R. Murray Gilchrist (1868 - 1917) was
known mainly for some unremarkable regional and other novels together with a
few bog standard topographical books on Yorkshire and the Peak District, none of which have ever
attracted the attention of collectors. Then, in the 1970s his horror fiction began
to be anthologised and before long this Yorkshireman was being hailed as a undeservedly
neglected master of the Decadent and Gothic, worthy to rank with some of the
greatest masters of the genre. Over the past forty years stories from his debut
collection The Stone Dragon have been
anthologized more than a dozen times and the book has been reprinted in 1984,
1994 and 2003. Because of this interest demand for first editions of his most
acclaimed book has escalated enormously in recent years.
Frustratingly, little is known about the life of Gilchrist.
It seems that he was born in Sheffield in 1868, where he attended the grammar
school there, and apart from a short sojourn in Paris soon afterwards, he remained
in the Peak district for the rest of his short life, living for some time near
Holmesfield, in his mother’s house, the largely
Tudor Cartledge Hall, with a male companion, which suggests that he may have
been gay. In the early 1890s his ‘Decadent’ tales featured in W. E. Henley’s National Observer, a mainly non-fiction
magazine that also published Yeats and Kipling. In 1891, his first novel, Passion the Plaything appeared, but
although this and two further novels, Frangipanni
(1893) and Hercules and the
Marionettes (1894) were not a great critical success, reviewers were much
more enthusiastic about his first collection The Stone Dragon which came out in 1894.. Thereafter, Gilchrist was in demand and he published
further stories in more mainstream magazines, including The Idler, Pall Mall Magazine
and Windsor Magazine.
It has been remarked that the critical neglect of Gilchrist since
his death in 1917 has been mainly due to his unevenness as a writer. Writing
mainly of his novels one critic of the time described his work as 'incomplete,
elliptical, mannered and uncontrolled'. Elsewhere the same critic, after
praising the good qualities of one particular novel, condemned him as a writer
of 'great moments and appalling weaknesses.' These remarks, which were echoed
by other critics, seem to have contributed to Gilchrist’s critical fate.The stories
in The Stone Dragon, however, appear to
have escaped these critical reservations, despite
the fact that some of them share some of the stylistic failings of the novels.
It’s the themes treated by Gilchrist in this Decadent fiction that attract the
modern sensibility. Stories that address same-sex passion, the lust for youth, and
feminism, predominate and it is perhaps no coincidence that the resurrection of
Gilchrist followed directly on from the sexual liberation of the nineteen
sixties.
In the title story, for instance, the hero has to choose
between two women—one boringly conventional and submissive and the other erotic
and unconventional, with the stone dragon itself acting as a symbol of emotion frozen
for all time, just as in a conventional marriage. Other aspects of gender and
sexuality that occupied so many writers and artists of the 1890s (one thinks
immediately of Beardsley and Swinburne) are explored with imaginative power in The Stone Dragon and in later
collections.
If you want some first or early editions of Gilchrist for a
few pounds his topographical guides are
easily available. Most bookshops will stock Ripon
and Harrogate (1914) and The Peak
District (1911) for around £5 each, though one chancer in East Moseley
wants a very silly $244 for The Peak
District because it retains its dust jacket ( he must have been reading
Tanselle on book jackets !). The bigger prices are reserved for Gilchrist’s
novels, a handful of which are available online. One of the cheapest seems to
be Damosel Croft at $83 (Peter
Ellis), with the undated Pretty Fanny’s
Way going for $164.39. Most of the other novels hover around $90.
Not surprisingly, The
Stone Dragon claims top spot. There is an wonderful inscribed copy of this 'legendarily scarce' title on sale from Adrian Harrington at a decadent $4,152,
but if you have a ‘ horror ‘ of paying over the odds, one dealer in Australia
will sell you a copy in only slightly worse condition for $1,250, which seems a
bargain to me. Incidentally, if you can somehow find the ‘Colonial ‘edition of
the same book it should cost you even less. [
Many thanks Robin. This is a book I have never seen although one customer has a copy down Bexhill way. Must
check him out when next in God's waiting room.
