Friday, 28 April 2023

Book News! The Room Opposite ~ F. M. Mayor

I am very pleased to announce that The Room Opposite: And Other Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Flora Macdonald Mayor, originally published in 1935, never republished and out of print for numerous decades, is now available in a new edition. And this edition has a long essay about the author, written by me. It also includes a long article that Flora wrote in 1905 about life with a touring theatre company. I'm biased, but I think the book turned out really well. I do hope that Flora would be pleased!

Nezu Press, 1 April 2023. 
ISBN-13: 978-1739392109.  
Hardback with dust jacket, 406 pages. 

I wrote a post about the stories in this collection back in 2016, and you can read it by clicking here.

Here's the publisher blurb:

In 1935, Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd. published The Room Opposite: And Other Tales of Mystery and Imagination by F. M. Mayor, a collection of sixteen tales that had been left unpublished at the author's death. It was issued with a recommendation from no less eminent a critic of ghost stories than M. R. James, who wrote, 'The stories in this volume which introduce the supernatural commend themselves to me very strongly.' Secondhand copies of the first edition are incredibly hard to come by, and the book has never been republished... until now. This new edition contains all sixteen stories, along with a long article which originally appeared in The Queen newspaper in 1905 entitled 'Life in a Touring Company'. This edition also includes an introduction by Gina R. Collia: 'F. M. Mayor: Author, Actress & Champion of the Superfluous Woman'.


The new edition alongside the 1935 first edition.