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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 3, September 1944
Page 44
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44 FANTASY COMMENTATOR qualities and a worthy member of a memorable trilogy. Let the reader reflect for a moment on Mr. Hodgson's competitors in the field of imaginative writing. Though such literary giants as Arthur Machen and M. P. Shiel, tramping behind, were not receiving the praise that was to be their due in coming years, he still had to compete with two recognized masters: Algernon Blackwood and Montague Rhodes James. The former's fantasy Jimbo was being published in the same year (1909), and the preceeding three years had witnessed the appearance of a trio of that master's works---The Empty House, The Listener, John Silence---that definitely established Blackwood's reputation. And with the publication of his initial collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) M. R. James had but recently gained a following as a writer of the supernatural that he has not lost to this very day. Arthur C. Benson's Hill of Trouble (1903) was still being read and reprinted, as was Robert Hugh Benson's equally worth collection of supernatural happenings A Mirror of Shalott (1907). The fact that he could gain recognition in the face of such opposition speaks volumes in itself for Hodgson's abilities as a exponent of the outre. The next three years were not idle ones for him. His reputation made, he occupied himself with the production of several smaller works which were eagerly sought after by British magazines, and some of which were to appear abroad in American periodicals, as well as to be collected in book form at a still more advanced date. It was in this period, too, that that literary gargantua, nearly 200,000 words in length, The Night Land was completed. With its publication (in 1912) the author received but slightly qualified praise from all quarters. "It cannot be denied that The Night Land is a wonderful effort," said the Manchester Courier. The Pall Mall Gazette called the work "an extraordinary love tale" and added that the author was "gifted with a strong imagination." "A remarkably fine piece of narrative...a tour de force," stated the Morning Leader. Said Vanity Fair: The book is in every sense remarkable...The style in which it is written, the theme of which it treats, and the eerie imaginative quality which abounds in it are all exceedingly rare and fascinating, so that when once it has been taken up one cannot leave it for any length of time. Country Life, the Morning Post and the Occult Review were other periodicals, all of which spoke in complimentary terms of the novel. The Bookman likewise noted its appearance; I quote in full the review which appeared in its June 1912 number (vol. 42, p. 137): You may say that in The Night Land Mr. Hope Hodgson's reach exceeds his grasp, that his story in some of its details is obscure and difficult to follow, that he tells it in a quaint, archaic language that does not make for easy reading, but at least you cannot say that he has not aimed at doing a big thing. He has set himself to unfold a love tale that is not bounded by the limits of a lifetime, but continues and is renewed again at last in a strange dream-life after many centuries. His hero is a man of two hundred years ago who loses a woman he loves not long after she is married to him; in utter grief and despair all his thoughts go yearning after her---they carry him far on down the ages yet to be, and he seeks her and cries out for her through new and newer planes of existence until, at length, in a miraculous trace state he finds himself at the close of some million of years living the latter days of the world when
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44 FANTASY COMMENTATOR qualities and a worthy member of a memorable trilogy. Let the reader reflect for a moment on Mr. Hodgson's competitors in the field of imaginative writing. Though such literary giants as Arthur Machen and M. P. Shiel, tramping behind, were not receiving the praise that was to be their due in coming years, he still had to compete with two recognized masters: Algernon Blackwood and Montague Rhodes James. The former's fantasy Jimbo was being published in the same year (1909), and the preceeding three years had witnessed the appearance of a trio of that master's works---The Empty House, The Listener, John Silence---that definitely established Blackwood's reputation. And with the publication of his initial collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) M. R. James had but recently gained a following as a writer of the supernatural that he has not lost to this very day. Arthur C. Benson's Hill of Trouble (1903) was still being read and reprinted, as was Robert Hugh Benson's equally worth collection of supernatural happenings A Mirror of Shalott (1907). The fact that he could gain recognition in the face of such opposition speaks volumes in itself for Hodgson's abilities as a exponent of the outre. The next three years were not idle ones for him. His reputation made, he occupied himself with the production of several smaller works which were eagerly sought after by British magazines, and some of which were to appear abroad in American periodicals, as well as to be collected in book form at a still more advanced date. It was in this period, too, that that literary gargantua, nearly 200,000 words in length, The Night Land was completed. With its publication (in 1912) the author received but slightly qualified praise from all quarters. "It cannot be denied that The Night Land is a wonderful effort," said the Manchester Courier. The Pall Mall Gazette called the work "an extraordinary love tale" and added that the author was "gifted with a strong imagination." "A remarkably fine piece of narrative...a tour de force," stated the Morning Leader. Said Vanity Fair: The book is in every sense remarkable...The style in which it is written, the theme of which it treats, and the eerie imaginative quality which abounds in it are all exceedingly rare and fascinating, so that when once it has been taken up one cannot leave it for any length of time. Country Life, the Morning Post and the Occult Review were other periodicals, all of which spoke in complimentary terms of the novel. The Bookman likewise noted its appearance; I quote in full the review which appeared in its June 1912 number (vol. 42, p. 137): You may say that in The Night Land Mr. Hope Hodgson's reach exceeds his grasp, that his story in some of its details is obscure and difficult to follow, that he tells it in a quaint, archaic language that does not make for easy reading, but at least you cannot say that he has not aimed at doing a big thing. He has set himself to unfold a love tale that is not bounded by the limits of a lifetime, but continues and is renewed again at last in a strange dream-life after many centuries. His hero is a man of two hundred years ago who loses a woman he loves not long after she is married to him; in utter grief and despair all his thoughts go yearning after her---they carry him far on down the ages yet to be, and he seeks her and cries out for her through new and newer planes of existence until, at length, in a miraculous trace state he finds himself at the close of some million of years living the latter days of the world when
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