The Cosmic Circle of
Wonder and Imagination

“…if you have so much as a splinter of wonder in you, you read

Hodgson, and you know without question he is a master.”

– China Miéville

“This outstanding ability of Hodgson, to plunge into a dream world

and stay there for a book-length sojourn, fits with his seriousness and

lends to his tale a straightforward, desperate convincingness”

– Fritz Leiber

This, the second volume of The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson brings together two of his most enduring and influential creations—The House on the Borderland, and the supernatural detective Carnacki. This book is also a detailed exploration of the duality (only hinted at in the first volume of this series) that suffuses his fiction—the “wonder” and “dream world(s)” of his prose versus its “straightforward, desperate convincingness.” To put it more simply: the Cosmic versus the Mundane.

The House on the Borderland was Hodgson’s second published novel, and is the penultimate example of his narrative duality. Half the book is devoted to the cosmic exploration of the nature of reality, while the other half of the book is a tightly paced, suspenseful siege narrative. Critics have cited this duality as a reason for its effectiveness; or conversely, the reason for its failure. In either case, The House on the Borderland remains a stunningly memorable achievement. Like a vast, burning star at the center of the universe of fantastic literature, the influence of this novel has been felt continuously since its publication.

Chapman & Hall (who a year earlier had published The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”) published The House on the Borderland in 1908, and like Glen Carrig, Borderland was greeted with nearly unanimous critical praise. Despite this it apparently did not sell well, and would be the last Hodgson title published by Chapman & Hall. It seems that Hodgson’s contemporary readers were not as accepting of his cosmic extravagance as were the critics and later readers such as H. P. Lovecraft, who deemed it “The greatest of all of Mr. Hodgson’s works.”

Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder arose out of Hodgson’s desire to build a reliable market for his short fiction. A popular series character all but guaranteed regular sales to the magazine markets. Carnacki is at once an example of his pursuit of commercial markets, and at the same time, and an indication of his fascination with the fantastic. This fusion of popular formula and personal fixation resulted in one of the most enduring figures of the ghost breaker/psychic detective genre. It is also another great example of the duality that inhabits his work—a detective... of the supernatural.

“The Gateway Monster,” “The House Among the Laurels,” “The Whistling Room,” “The Horse of the Invisible,” and “The Searcher of the End House” were published in The Idler in 1910, from January through May. “The Thing Invisible” had been scheduled to appear in the June issue, but was not published until January 1912, in The New Magazine. It would be the last Carnacki story to see publication during Hodgson’s lifetime.

Several of these stories were slightly re-written for their 1913 republication in the Eveleigh Nash book entitled Carnacki The Ghost-Finder. In addition to rewriting them, Hodgson also reworked the order in which they were presented. In 1910, for copyright reasons, an abridged edition was published in the US. This edition was titled Carnacki, The Ghost Finder, and a Poem. It featured events of the Carnacki stories as part of a single narrative. It is an interesting and effective enough variant that it will be reprinted in the fifth volume of this series.

The final three Carnacki stories were not published until after Hodgson’s death. “The Haunted Jarvee” was revised by Hodgson’s wife at the request of the editor of The Premier Magazine in 1919, and it eventually saw publication ten years later in the March 1929 issue. It was further (but only slightly) revised by August Derleth for its publication in the 1947 Mycroft & Moran edition of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. “The Hog” was published for the first time (via Derleth’s efforts) in the January 1947 issue of Weird Tales, and was subsequently reprinted in the Mycroft & Moran edition, which also featured the previously unpublished story “The Find.”

It has been suggestioned that these last two stories might have been fabricated by Mycroft & Moran/Arkham House publisher August Derleth. However, noted Hodgson scholar Sam Moskowitz confirmed the existence of the manuscript for “The Find” and has noted that Derleth changed “virtually nothing.” Moskowitz also found several notes from Hodgson’s letters that refer to the submission of a story called “The Hog.” Without a doubt, these two stories were revised and edited by Derleth, but at their core, they are Hodgson’s work. The editorial changes make them stand out from the earlier Carnacki stories, but they are an artifact of their time—edited and published posthumously due to Hodgson’s inability to find a venue for their publication during his lifetime.

The last section of this volume captures another facet of the duality of Hodgson’s writing—the seemingly supernatural story with a natural explanation. Hodgson could lead his readers to the brink of the fantastic and then, teasingly, frustratingly, reel them back down to earth. This formula found its way into a Carnacki story, and also reappeared in several of his mystery and adventure pieces. Whether straight mystery, adventure, or the formula described above, the stories in the final section of this book are a revealing strata that spans his career... from his first published story, “The Goddess Death,” to several that did not see publication until more then sixty years after his death.

Whether on land, at sea, or in the places beyond and between, Hodgson kept one foot firmly planted in the real world and one foot in the ether. From popular mystery fiction to ghost breakers to cosmic visions, Hodgson knew how to give the reader glimpses into the unseen vistas of the universe. These flights of cosmic fantasy... these explorations that begin here and go elsewhere, have been inspiring readers and writers for generations. From H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, to Fritz Leiber and China Miéville, with hundreds of others in between—the cosmic circle of fantastic fiction that began with William Hope Hodgson remains unbroken.

Jeremy Lassen

San Francisco,

November, 2003