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Buchan

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Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939

Part of the book series: Palgrave Gothic ((PAGO))

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Abstract

Contrasting with the previous chapter’s focus on literary obscurity, in this chapter Machin looks at an extremely popular and well-known writer, John Buchan. Redressing the critical neglect of Buchan’s significant body of weird fiction, Machin also considers the intersection of weird and popular fiction during its ‘high phase’, positioning Buchan as a transitional figure between the literary Decadence of the 1890s and the pulp magazine market emergent in the early twentieth century. Using archival material, Machin also presents some of Buchan’s own analysis and discussion of weird fiction, produced in his capacity as a reader for John Lane, a publisher firmly associated with the Decadent 1890s. Machin’s discussion of Buchan’s own weird fiction also takes in some wider contexts of the mode; its intersections with colonial adventure fiction, with paganism, and its demonstration of modernist anxieties regarding the resilience of civilization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For further discussion of Bennett’s literary reputation, see Peter D. McDonald, British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice, 1880-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and (Carey 1992).

  2. 2.

    Despite this historical neglect, the considerable dearth of serious academic engagement with Buchan’s work has now begun to be addressed with the recent publication of three critical works: Modern John Buchan: A Critical Introduction (2009), Reassessing John Buchan (2009), and John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity (2013).

  3. 3.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899.

  4. 4.

    According to Ian Ousby, The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 212, the Kailyard School was ‘a group of nineteenth-century Scottish writers who wrote […] about homespun topics and promoted a sentimental image of small-town life. “Kailyard”, meaning “cabbage patch”.’

  5. 5.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 15 July 1896.

  6. 6.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 17 February 1897.

  7. 7.

    A later, comparable example of a similar trope is E. F. Benson’s 1922 story ‘The Horror Horn’, set in the Swiss Alps.

  8. 8.

    (Grant 2009, 183); Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 2 July 1896.

  9. 9.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 28 July 1896.

  10. 10.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 2 July 1896.

  11. 11.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, undated, circa July 1896.

  12. 12.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 2 April 1897.

  13. 13.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, undated (circa April 1896).

  14. 14.

    James Joyce mentions Keary in a letter circa 24 September 1905, to his brother Stanislaus, and in a footnote the editors of the Selected Letters suggest that ’Twixt Dog and Wolf is ‘probably meant’. However, Keary’s ‘novel of Bloomsbury life’ Bloomsbury (1905) seems a far more likely candidate. See (Joyce 1957, II:111).

  15. 15.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, undated (circa April 1896).

  16. 16.

    Austin, HRC, John Lane Company Records, Box 64, Reader’s reports 1894–1899, 2 April 1896.

  17. 17.

    For a discussion of this aspect of Blackwood’s fiction, see my ‘Algernon Blackwood’ for Weird Fiction Review, 2013 (http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/01/wfrs-101-weird-writers-19-algernon-blackwood/).

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  1. Royal College of Art, London, UK

    James Machin

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Machin, J. (2018). Buchan. In: Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90527-3_4

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