‘[O]ne of the most singular volumes of weird tales in English literature.’ – Hugh Lamb ‘An artist too little known and valued by his own generation, yet no record of the English short story would be complete without a study of his contributions.’ – Eden Phillpotts ‘The book is sinister, enveloped in gloom – yes, and Decadent . . . but it is strong, it has authenticity . . . there is nothing quite like The Stone Dragon in modern English fiction: but in it you may distinctly trace the influence of Poe, and perhaps also Villiers de l’Isle Adam and Charles Baudelaire.’ Thus one anonymous contemporary critic summed up R. Murray Gilchrist’s first (and only) collection of Gothic and weird tales, The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances (1894). Extremely scarce in its original edition, Gilchrist’s book has gone on to be recognized as a classic of Decadent and horror fiction deserving of recognition alongside the works of Arthur Machen, Eric Stenbock, and Vernon Lee. Told in a hauntingly beautiful prose, Gilchrist’s tales of murder, madness, and doomed love exercise a fascination that is wholly unique. This digital edition reprints the unabridged text of the 1894 Methuen first edition and includes the stories ‘The Stone Dragon’, ‘The Manuscript of Francis Shackerley’, ‘Midsummer Madness’, ‘The Lost Mistress’, ‘Witch In-Grain’, ‘The Noble Courtesan’, ‘The Writings of Althea Swarthmoor’, ‘The Return’, ‘The Basilisk’, ‘Dame Inowslad’, ‘Excerpts from Pliny Witherton’s Journal: Also a Letter of Crystalla’s’, ‘My Friend’, ‘Roxana Runs Lunatick’, and ‘The Pageant of Ghosts’.
Author
Robert Murray Gilchrist was born in Sheffield, England in 1867. He never married and throughout his life lived mostly in remote places, including the North Derbyshire village of Holmesfield and a remote part of the Peak District. He began his writing career in 1890 with a novel, Passion the Plaything, and would go on to publish a total of 22 novels, six story collections, four regional interest books, and a play. His stories appeared in many popular periodicals of that era, including The Temple Bar and the decadent journal The Yellow Book. Not much is known about Gilchrist’s personal life, but he is known to have lived for a time with a male companion, and given that Gilchrist never married and sometimes featured homoerotic themes in his work, as in the story ‘My Friend’, it is possible he was homosexual. Though well known today to connoisseurs of weird and Decadent fiction, Gilchrist’s story collection The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances was generally poorly received by critics on its initial appearance in 1894, and following the book’s failure, Gilchrist chose to write in other genres. It was not until Hugh Lamb began anthologizing some of Gilchrist’s work in the 1970s that he began to be rediscovered. Now he is ranked by many alongside other fin de siècle practitioners of weird fiction, including Vernon Lee, Arthur Machen, and Eric Stenbock and The Stone Dragon is a volume highly sought-after by collectors. During World War I, Gilchrist was noted for his charitable assistance to Belgian refugees, many of whom attended his funeral after his death in 1917. -Valancourt Books
