Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library

I recently ran across the image of an old paperback I had back in the late ‘70s and it brought back a flood of memories.  It was the same edition I had owned of The Glittering Plain from the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series, which pretty much took over the field when the Ballentine Adult Fantasy series petered out.  The crappy blue monocolor cover and the hippy-dippy “mod” font on the inset was unmistakable. .This got me googling around the internet to unearth some information about the long-gone Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series of books.  I hadn’t thought about them for decades. Those old style covers eventually were phased out for full color covers with original art with later issues. 

The creators of the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series, Douglas Menville and Robert Reginald, were no newbies to the fantasy genre or to publishing.  They previously had produced the magazine, Forgotten Fantasy from October 1970 to June 1971, running to only five issues of reprints of fantasy works.  I seem to recall seeing some copies lying about years later at used book shops, but I never picked them up, to my loss.  Little did I know, but the mod font of Forgotten Fantasy inset on the covers of the NFFL series was from the previous magazine, Forgotten Fantasy.  It only took thirty something years to clear up the mystery for me!  The late sixties and throughout the seventies were a rich time for new stories, revivals of old stories and for the world of gaming as we know it.

You’ll see some familiar faces with the NFFL series such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany and lots of H Rider Haggard and even an appearance of Bram Stoker.  Many of these authors had previously appeared in the Ballentine Adult Fantasy^[1] series, although those stories were not repeated in the NFFL series.  More importantly you will find some authors not commonly mentioned in the past fifty years such as Leslie Barringer author of the hard to find Neustrian Cycle.  David Lindsay is there, but he’s not the modern American author, but the Englishman who wrote A Voyage to Acturus (1920), which appeared in a precursor volume of the Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series in 1968.

As a warning to some of the younger readers of this blog, the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series is a collection of antique books that are primarily Anglophile or Eurocentric in scope.  They were reprinted in the 1970s, much like the earlier Ballentine Adult Fantasy series and should be treated as a snapshot of that period.  Many of the books of these series were originally published a century or more ago, so they may not conform to the present state of fantasy writing, which is just as well, as fantasy is all about going out of the box and exploring “what ifs”.  When we lose our ability to dream and to put those ideas out in public we lose a large part of ourselves.  When we lose the possibility of publishing those dreams or being able to find them at bookstores or on line, we are in a dystopia.

One may ask, why such old tales are important now?  Here thirty five years later, well after the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library ended its run and the original stories are sixty to a hundred fifty years old, with its books consigned to private libraries and to quiet bookshops, these authors have something to say to us about times past and about how people thought and read.  Really, they are not fundamentally different from us nor we from the author of Gilgamesh. 

I’m not here to create new or anoint exiting cannon, just to give new readers some ideas outside of the (present) box and let some older readers go down memory lane for a bit with these familiar works.  There’s recently been a lot of fuss about Appendix N ^[2] books and the like, as well as other “must read” or “must not read” lists.  There are attempts to control the narrative of Fantasy in the present as well as quelling books from the past.  Let’s keep our intellectual freedom open and away from self-appointed gatekeepers who think that they are the only ones who know what should be in print or on the net.  The other side of this problem is that there are those who think that the Fantasy genre is static, like a fly in amber and only their approved cannon is of consequence.  Both sides are wrong. 

Many of these books are out of copyright and available for free on line through such sites as Project Gutenberg or its sister down under Project Gutenberg Australia, or at the Internet Archive.org as well as through other electronic means. I found nearly all of them online in a variety of e-formats, including audio, and for free.  Did I mention free?  Additionally, some of these titles can be found as physical books at on-line book sites and at some book shops, used and for fairly reasonable prices.  Call me old fashioned, but nothing really takes the place of holding a real book in your hands. 

I have listed these works in order of their printing in the NFFL series, with the title and author linked to a page.  You can easily explore around and learn a bit about these books and their authors.

The Glittering Plain (1891) by William Morris, #1 NFFL, pub Sept 1973

The Saga of Eric Brighteyes (1890) by H. Rider Haggard, #2 NFFL, pub Mar 1974

The Food of Death:  Fifty-One Tales, (1915) by Lord Dunsany, #3 NFFL, pub Sept 1974

The Haunted Woman (1921) by David Lindsay, #4 NFFL, pub Mar 1975

Aladore (1914) by Sir Henry Newbolt, #5 NFFL, pub Sep 1975

She and Allan (1921) by H Rider Haggard, #6 NFFL, pub Sep 1975

Gerfalcon (1927) by Leslie Barringer, first book of the Neustrian Cycle, #7 NFFL, pub Mar 1976

Golden Wings and Other Stories (1856) by William Morris, #8 NFFL, pub Mar 1976

Joris of the Rock (1928) by Leslie Barringer, the second book of the Neustrian Cycle, #9 NFFL, pub Sep 1976

Heart of the World  (1895) by H Rider Haggard, #10 NFFL, pub Sep 1976

The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician (1890) by Edwin Lester Arnold, #11 NFFL, pub Apr 1977

Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895) by William Morris, #12 NFFL, pub Apr 1977

Shy Leopardess (1948) by Leslie Barringer, the last book of the Neustrian Cycle, #13 NFFL, pub Oct 1977

Ayesha:  the Return of She (1905) by H Rider Haggard, #14 NFFL, pub Oct 1977

The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed (1914) by Kenneth Morris, #15 NFFL, pub Apr 1978

The House of the Wolfings (1889) by William Morris, #16 NFFL, pub Apr 1978

Under the Sunset (1881) by Bram Stoker, #17 NFFL, pub Oct 1978

Alan Quatermain (1887) by H Rider Haggard, #18 NFFL, pub Oct 1978

The Roots of the Mountains (1889) by William Morris #19 NFFL, pub Apr 1979

Nada the Lily (1892) by H Rider Haggard, #20 NFFL, pub Apr 1979

Jaufry the Knight and the Fair Brunissende (1856) trans by Alfred Elwes #21, pub Oct 1979

The Spirit of Bambatse (1906) by H Rider Haggard, #22 NFFL, Oct 1979 also titled Benith elsewhere

When Birds Fly South (1945) by Standton A Coblentz, #23 NFFL pub, Apr 1980

Alan’s Wife [and other tales] (1889) by H Rider Haggard, #24 NFFL pub, Oct 1980

I’ve enjoyed doing a bit of research on the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library and find that I had owned and had read about half of the books on the list, several from the NFFL, which means I have a dozen more books to read! 

In some cases there are no simple links to the titles available.  I ask the readers to please help and add the articles to Wikipedia if they have read the books.  When you do so, let me know and I’ll update this list with a link.

Keep on reading …                 CoastConFan

Footnotes 

^[1]  I’ve written previously about some of the books from the Ballentine Adult Fantasy series books in other posts on my blog, eventually I’ll actually produce a post about the BAF.

Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung, Li Kung and A Case for Mandarin English

William Hope Hodgson and the H. P. Lovecraft Connection

^[2]  The introduction and book list to Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979) by Earnest Gary Gygax, p 224 says it well: http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm

Additional Links of interest

List of  books by Haggard  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_H._Rider_Haggard

List of Lord Dunsany books  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Lord_Dunsany

List of William Morris books  http://www.morrissociety.org/morris/bibliography.html

Leslie Barringer’s three Neustrian Cycle books might still be in copyright, if so, they are available as pay e-books online.  

A great site with some of the illustrators for H Rider Haggard’s books  http://www.visualhaggard.org/illustrators

Now a little exit music please – https://youtu.be/zqfFrCUrEbY .    My thanks to The Zimmers for their 2007 cover of The Who’s My Generation, which was first released in 1965 in the UK, so it seems appropriate.

Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung, Li Kung and A Case for Mandarin English

My first exposure to the works of Ernest Bramah Smith, under the pen name  Ernest Bramah, was from Lin Carter’s Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series, which introduced young readers (and not a few older ones) to fantasy works both important and rare, many of which had been out of print for years.  This was especially important in those days before the internet or for those without a major metropolitan library available.   Although the series ran from 1969 to 1974, it placed important volumes in the hands of readers who might never have previously encountered them.

name was

The series had two Ernest Bramah books in its listings, Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (number 45), which was reprinted in 1972 for the series and Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (number 64) in 1974.  Actually I read the second one first and turned up the former at a SF convention in the latter ‘70s.   Eventually, I had nearly all the BAF books, including the precursors and leftovers, carefully collected over many years at used book shops, conventions and flea markets.  Alas, they went with The Storm, along many hundred of their siblings, but such is the way of things.   But now I have many of them in electronic format.

Recently I turned up a book that made me suspect that Bramah’s character Kai Lung may be a humorous nod to a real historical figure in Chinese history:  Li Kung-lin ^[a] , was a Sung  philosopher and painter of the 11^th century who is considered to be an important scholar of Confucius.  The transliteration of the name stuck me as too much of a coincidence as Ernest Bramah Smith was supposedly quite well read.  I have a strong feeling that Li Kung was indeed the inspiration for Bramah’s literary character Kai Lung, although I have no proof.  Now this possibility might be known and documented some deep Ernest Bramah scholars, but that is unknown to me.  I’d certainly like to see somebody take this up and either expose my ignorance or agree with my hypothesis.

The book in question in this bit of serendipity that set this post in motion was a volume called Li Kung-lin’s Classic of Filial Piety^[b] , which was published in translation (1993) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, authored by Richard M. Barnhart, Gonglin Li, and Robert E. Harrist.  The Met site had it available for free download and you know me and free ebooks. Many thanks to the Met for their e-generosity.  The link to download both this fine Met book and English translations of Li Kung’s original work for those of you who are interested is available here.  http://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/li_kung_lins_classic_of_filial_piety 

Translations of the text here 

https://archive.org/stream/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety_djvu.txt   and   https://archive.org/details/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety

Bramah’s technique of poking fun at British institutions by pretending they are actually translated from Chinese and written in a stilted “English translation” style of formal language which is jokingly called Mandarin English for its formal stiffness and yet subtlety of meaning.  In addition to facetiously flowery language, circumlocution, and obscure descriptions of common western ideas, he also used joking proverbs and aphorisms, many of which are recognizable distortions of English sayings.  For examples of these you can go to the Wikipedia page for Ernest Bramah page in the “writing career” section  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bramah

This site gives twenty five Kai Lung quotes to amuse the reader  http://www.azquotes.com/author/28464-Ernest_Bramah as does Wikiquote  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Bramah .  Here is a pretty good essay about Ernest Bramah that also explains Mandarin English  http://www.ernestbramah.com/gaspar.htm .

An origin of this style of writing in English literature can probably be referenced to Tobias Smollett’s satirical work The History and Adventure of an Atom, (1749) where Smollett makes fun of England and English figures by pretending it’s actually Japan. Bramah’s Kai Lung stories does pretty much the same, but more gently and with a good deal more geniality.  The History and Adventure of an Atom is an amusing proto-science fiction work in itself, as communication with an atom is not possible nor are they sapient, at least as far as we know.  The link for downloading is in the link section.

Another possible source (and closer to the experience of the average person) is Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, which Bramah was surely familiar since the opera has run on stages from its debut in 1885 to the present day.  Nobody watching or reading the operetta could fail to notice that the characters of The Mikado were actually based British civil servants. 

Another source is Jonathan Swift’s satire is probably better known to today’s readers with his famous Gulliver’s Travels.  Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) has the Struldbrugs of Luggnagg near Japan, but this is probably reaching a bit in connecting him to Brama.  What can’t be discounted, however is that Bramah was familiar with Swift’s satire.

To bring this discussion a bit more up to date, Brama’s humorous Mandarin English style is not what is now is being called orientalization by any means.  In fact, he was poking fun at Britain and its institutions, not at Chinese people or the their culture during the imperial period.   Nor was Bramah doing so it in the sense of Edward Said’s definition found in his book Orientalism (1978), which is making the rounds again in fashionable salons who have just discovered the book as it nears its fourth decade in print. 

Lin Carter, the architect of Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series said in his book Discoveries in Fantasy (1974)  “Ernest Bramah’s China, then, is a fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all.  He wrote in a prose so perfectly conceived that it become a miracle of style.  As Hilarie Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah’s stories is a trick he achieved by pretending t adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English”.  Kai Lung had several fans over the years along with Hillary Belloc and surprisingly Jorg Luis Borges was also a fan.

There are two Kai Lung books have been printed, both containing stories not previously available.  One is a rare volume in an edition of 250 published in 1974, that escaped my attention for many years due to its rarity, which was called Kai Lung Six, which is a group of stories originally published in Punch and not seen the light of day since then.  Those stories and a number of never-published Kai Lung stories appear in the much more accessible and more recent  book, Kai Lung Raises His Voice (2010) by Durrant Pub.  I haven’t yet gotten a copy, but it’s on my list.

At this point, I’d like to point out another work by Bramah that showcases his style is, The Mirror of Kong Ho (1905). While not part of the Kai Lung series, its in the mood of his style with a series of short stories in the form of letters from a Chinese gentleman discussing the eccentricities of the barbarians living in England.  It really holds up a mirror to the west at a time where westerners took themselves and their superiority for granted. 

Personally, Ernest Bramah Smith very private man who gave no details of his life during his time on this planet.   The only recent biography of him is by Aubrey Wilson, The Search for Ernest Bramah (Creighton and Read 2007).  I didn’t use this book as a source simply because I didn’t have a copy available.  It’s possible the Kai Lung/Li Kung story is explained there.   The Wikipedia article on him and the below essay in links is about all that’s easily accessible on the web as far as his personal life.  But what’s important is not the man, but the works and what them mean to us, both when they were originally written, beginning about a century ago and what they mean to us today.

Hopefully, this bit of esoteric diversion hasn’t bored you too much and has given you a few books to consider reading this fall.  I’m no scholar but have been a reader and autodidact for half a century and not a few books have both fallen into my grasp as well as escaped my attention.  In any case, all but a few of the mentioned books are free downloads, so it won’t cost you anything to enjoy them. 

                         CoastConFan

The text to this post is copyright William Murphy 2016 – ‘cause I created this.  The images belong to their creators and quotes of others are attributed.  If I missed anything, let me know.   Feel free to link to this post or quote me. 

Footnotes

[a]   “The figure painter Li Kung-lin, who lived in China from about 1041 to 1106, was the leading exponent of the Northern Sung scholar-official aesthetic. One hundred seven of his works were recorded in the great government catalogue of the imperial collection of paintings a few years after his death. Sadly, today only three of his works still exist. The hand scroll of the Hsiao-ching, or Classic of Filial Piety, a classic of the orthodox canon of Confucianism, is one of those three. It is among the preeminent monuments of Chinese cultural and art history”.  Richard M. Barnhart, Prof  History of Art at Yale

Additionally, for those of you who have a thirst for knowledge, the role of filial piety within Confucian thought and society is discussed in Fung Yu-lan’s, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Dirk Bodde, 2 vols.  Also I found Li Kung-lins’s name in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, pg 704.

[b]  “A slight volume composed of eighteen chapters, the Classic of Filial Piety takes the form of a dialogue between Confucius and his disciple Tseng-tzu on the meaning and application of filial piety in the affairs of the individual and of the state. The text dates to the period between 350 and 200 B.C., long after either Confucius or his immediate disciples lived, but its subject, the governing of relationships among men and the rules of conduct by which society is made secure, was for centuries before and for centuries to come the keystone of Chinese society.

Before Li's time, the art of painting had been a public and imperial art, conveying the images, ideas, values, and propaganda of the imperial court, the powerful hereditary families, and the great temples. In the eleventh century, under the inspiration of Li Kung-lin and a few others, painting was transformed into a formal mode of expression, which, like poetry, could serve to convey the mind of the artist as well as the emblems of those who controlled his life. For Li, art was a tool, a moral vehicle that allowed him to set out his views of the institutions, ideas, and conflicts of his time.”  Richard M. Barnhart, Prof History of Art at Yale

Links of Interest – in no particular order, because I’m lazy

The Ernest  Bramah site http://www.ernestbramah.com/

Wikipedia article on The Wallet of Kai Lung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wallet_of_Kai_Lung 

Download a digital copy of some of Bramah’s works

Kai Lung series

The Wallet of Ki Lung (1900) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1076

Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (1922)  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1267

Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928)  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1302251h.html

The Moon of Much Gladness (1932)  Unavailable for free in digital format for now

Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree (1940)  Unavailable for free in digital format for now

Kai Lung Six (1974)  Unavailable for free in digital format

Kai Lung Raises His Voice (2010) Unavailable for free in digital format

The Mirror of Kong Ho (1905) While not part of the Kai Lung series it sets the pace for his style with a series of short stories in the form of letters from a Chinese gentleman discussing the eccentricities of the barbarians living in England.  It really holds up an amusing mirror to the west.   https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1077

And some other works by Bramah that were also popular in his time

Max Carrados  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34732 

Four Max Carrados Detective Stories  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12932

The Secret of the League:  The Story of a Social War  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34522

More stuff

An essay about Ernest Bramah  http://www.ernestbramah.com/gaspar.htm

The most recent biographical source is: Aubrey Wilson, The Search for Ernest Bramah (Creighton and Read 2007), which I have not read and so consequently have not used in this article.

Ernest  Bramah site http://www.ernestbramah.com/

Download Smollett’s Adventure of an Atom (1749)

https://archive.org/details/historyadventure01smol

Download Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in digitial formats

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/829 

What started this article in the first place was the discovery of this book (which you can download for free BTW) and of the existence of Li Kung, at least for me  http://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/li_kung_lins_classic_of_filial_piety 

By Richard M. Barnhart, Gonglin Li, Robert E. Harrist