Forgotten Book - Missing from their Homes

Missing from their Homes, my Forgotten Book from today, is a very interesting themed anthology that I've recently come across, and which dates from 1936. Unfortunately, it lacks any editorial material, but plainly the inspiration came from the announcements that the BBC used to make quite regularly about missing people. The BBC website suggests that such appeals are still sometimes made, though I can't recall ever having heard one. As an anthology theme, it's a good one (and, though I wasn't aware of this book at the time, over a decade ago I edited an anthology called Missing Persons - another reminder that there aren't as many original ideas out there as one would like to believe!)

Although the book is not specifically a crime fiction anthology, a number of the stories do fit neatly within the genre, while others are on its fringes.What is striking, however, is the quality of the contributors. So we have the young Graham Greene, with a very dark story indeed, as well as such notable and diverse writers as Arthur Machen, R.H. Mottram and H.E. Bates.

Two of my favourite stories were "The Gruesome Fit" by A.E. Coppard, and "Where is Mr Manetot?" by Phyllis Bentley. Coppard was a very accomplished short story writer, as his contribution demonstrates. Bentley was renowned as an author of Yorkshire family sagas such as Inheritance, but she dabbled in detective fiction for many years. Her story is unusual and appealing.

This is not a well-known anthology, and several of the stories in it seem never to have been reprinted. This is, I think, true of the contributions by that very interesting pair, E.M. Delafield, best known as a humorous writer and creator of the "Provincial Lady", and Anthony Berkeley. I was excited to see that the book contained a long story by Berkeley which I'd never come across elsewhere. However, having read "Publicity Heroine", I am afraid I can see why it has faded from view - it definitely falls short of his usual high standards. This was a disappointment, but overall I found the book extremely entertaining, and several of the stories were of real quality.

Arthur Machen

When I wrote about the CWA conference in Abergavenny recently, I mentioned that as well as locally born Ethel Lina White, another writer from South Wales came to my attention that week-end. This was, in fact, Arthur Machen, who was born not too far away in Caerleon-on-Usk (the Usk, as I discovered, is a lovely river and there are a number of very pleasant towns in its environs.)

There is a nice little museum at Abergavenny Castle, and when we visited it, I was interested to see a small exhibition about the life and work of Arthur Machen. I first came across Machen’s name many years ago, when I read Julian Symons’ brilliant Bloody Murder. He praises Machen’s book The Three Impostors, while noting that ‘it falls outside the detective canon’ and describing it as a tale of terror.

The opening line of the book, Symons says, is both tantalising and disturbing: ‘And Mr Joseph Waters is going to stay the night?’ When I first read this, I thought Symons was over-stating the impact of that sentence, and thought it rather ordinary, but on reflection I agree it has a sinister, fairly subtle, quality..

Machen is featured at length in Julia Briggs’ excellent study of supernatural fiction, Night Visitors, which is introducing me to some very interesting writers and stories. He clearly retains a power to appeal to the modern enthusiast – I learned in Abergavenny that there is a Friends of Arthur Machen Society (FOAM!) and for all I know he may even have a Facebook fan club.