Book News! Mistress Bridget and Other Tales

I am very pleased to announce that Mistress Bridget and Other Tales by E. Yolland, with an introductory essay by me, will be published on 15 July. It contains the novel Mistress Bridget and all seven of the author's extremely rare short stories. But in all likelihood, you've never heard of E. Yolland or the novel/stories, so I am going to tell you a little bit about this project to encourage you to rush off and buy the book.

First of all, who was E. Yolland? Well, until now nobody knew. When I began looking for information, there wasn't a single bit of it out there. There was no clue to the writer’s full name or sex, let alone anything more substantial. So, I started digging about—I went down the rabbit hole I'm always getting stuck in—and what I found out went into writing the fifteen page introduction to this new book. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to tell you a thing about E. Yolland here, but I can tell that this forgotten Victorian author has been fully identified.

So, what about the stories? Well, the novel Mistress Bridget was originally published in 1898 by F. V. White & Co.; it was the author's second book. It is set in seventeenth century England, a country divided in the aftermath of the English Civil War, where paranoia and superstition are rife throughout the land. In the village of Rithycombe in Somerset, Bridget Conyngham, the squire’s beautiful young daughter, is abandoned to the mercy of lawless soldiers and paranoid villagers. Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, is going about the country torturing anyone he doesn’t like the look of, and the villagers of Rithycombe, suspicious of Bridget’s healing abilities, are determined to save Hopkins the trouble of burning their witch. The supernatural element in the novel comes in the form of the ghosts of 'Madam' and a captain of the Parliamentary Army, who both haunt the manor where most of the action takes place.

E. Yolland's short stories appeared in two illustrated periodicals: Belgravia and Heart and Hand, the latter being a Church of England penny newspaper. The stories are: ‘The Miser’s Secret’, ‘Only a Smudge!’, ‘Impostors?’, ‘The Secret of the Dead’, ‘Autumn Clouds’, ‘On the Spur of the Moment’, and ‘In the Days of the Cagots’.  Of the seven tales, 'The Miser's Secret', ‘Only a Smudge!’ and 'The Secret of the Dead' have supernatural elements; the latter includes an apparition in an old church:

‘The kneeling lady rose swiftly from beside the coffer, and fell almost prostrate at my feet with thin hands raised in piteous prayer, and heavy tears trickling down the saddest face I ever saw. I rubbed my eyes to clear my vision, and with a start jumped up from what I suppose you will call a doze. I think otherwise, but that matters not.’

When I began my research, I had nothing to go on. I was determined but not terribly hopeful; after all, E. Yolland had been dead more than a hundred years, and even contemporary readers didn't know who the author was. As it is, I am extremely excited to have discovered so much, and I'm even more excited to be able to share my findings. 

Finally, here are the details of the book:

Published: Nezu Press, 15 July 2023.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7393921-2-3
.
Hardback with dust jacket, 314 pages.
Price: £25.00

Pre-order links will be posted here as they become available:

Amazon UK | Waterstones | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Barnes & Noble | Amazon FR

Top: The full dust jacket to the new Nezu Press book.

Bottom: The first edition of Mistress Bridget, 1898, and the 1896 volume of Hand and Heart (in which the short story ‘On the Spur of the Moment’ was published).

Book News! The Devil Snar'd ~ George R. Preedy

I'm very pleased to announce that The Devil Snar'd by George R. Preedy, the author best known as Marjorie Bowen, is available in a new edition, and it includes a long introduction written by me. It was originally published as a small paperback ‘ninepenny novel’ by Ernest Benn Ltd. in June 1932. It appeared again a year later, this time published by Cassell, in Dr. Chaos and The Devil Snar’d. But it's been out of print and largely forgotten since then, which is a terrible shame as it's a superbly unsettling story.

Nezu Press, 1 April 2023. 

ISBN-13: 978-1-7393921-1-6.  

Case laminate hardback, 164 pp.

Here's the publisher blurb:

George R. Preedy is one of the pen names of Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell, the writer best known as Marjorie Bowen. First published in 1932, The Devil Snar’d is an eerie tale of supernatural influence; it was described by the Daily Herald as a ‘ghost story fit to stand beside The Turn of the Screw.’ Grace Fielding and her unfaithful husband, Philip, have taken Medlar's Farm, in a remote spot in Northumberland, to get away from London and repair their broken marriage. Philip, a well-known author, intends to use the dark history of Medlar’s Farm—a tale of adultery, jealousy and murder—to write his next book, but Grace, already unwell due to the strain caused by her husband's affair, begins to see parallels between her own story and that of the murdered woman, who she believes is guiding her actions. As Philip works on his manuscript, his behaviour becomes more and more suspicious, and as Grace’s mental state deteriorates, a tale of adultery and marital discord soon becomes one of jealousy, obsession and murderous revenge. This edition includes an introduction by Gina R. Collia: 'The Many Masks of Margaret Campbell'.

Amazon UK | Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon FR | Barnes & Noble

Above: the new edition alongside the 1932 first edition.

As a Matter of Fact, Research Matters to Everyone

Research isn’t just for academics. It isn’t something that’s only relevant to students, professors, writers and scientists. It informs choices we all make in our normal everyday lives, whether we realise it or not. Research enables us to make evidence-based decisions, and, whether we are professionals, stay-at-home parents, students or simply very curious, we all carry out research on a daily basis.

But these days, there is so much information available to us, especially online, and not all of it is accurate, up-to-date or written with our best interests at heart. There’s a lot of misinformation, stale information and simple nonsense out there, and sifting through it all can be time consuming and frustrating.

It might be tempting, when putting together information for a blog post, press release or brochure, to simply include any information that you’ve seen repeated online several times already; after all, if it was in the Guardian, on a well-known supplier’s website, and quoted by a hundred other people who seem to know what they’re talking about, it must be accurate, right?

Working on that line, how many times does information have to be repeated before it’s accepted as a ‘fact’? There is no magic number! Information is factual simply because it is; it has nothing to do with how many times it’s reported in a newspaper, or talked about at a conference, or passed on from your great aunt Maud.

There is no safety in numbers. Nonsense doesn’t become sensible because a hundred people repeated it. There is never any replacement for good, honest research.

I carry out research every day for my work at Word Ferret, and countless times during each of those days I encounter the same thing: identical/very similar statements made on multiple websites with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Mr A copied Mrs B, who copied C & co., who got some information from D & E Ltd., and so it goes on. If nobody has included a reference to the primary source, it’s often difficult to find out where a piece of information originated. Then add in all the problems caused by misquotes, clumsy rewording, simple typing errors and deliberately misleading interpretations of an earlier version of whatever was said or written, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Here are a few things to consider if you’re thinking of putting information out there without getting your facts straight first:

• Customers/readers may not be quite as willing to swallow nonsense as companies/writers are to inflict it upon them.
• You may pass on someone else’s misinformation in error, but it is still misinformation, and you’re still responsible for passing it on.
• Sameness won’t make you stand out. Repeating the same thing that every man and his dog has already said or written will result in you becoming one small voice in a large (potentially misinformed) crowd.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to step out of it. Do the research, or hire someone to do it for you, and present it in a manner that enables your customers/audience to verify at least some of what you’re claiming.

If you need factual, well-researched content, Word Ferret is always here to help.