UPDATE: DECEMBER 8, 2007

Our first title, the expanded edition of Emma Frances Dawson's An Itinerant House, which collects all of her supernatural fiction, is now in print. It reached us just in time for the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Spring, where it was well-received. We are now taking orders for the book. The retail price is $49. (Please contact us for wholesale orders of five copies or more.)

The book was printed in an edition of 500 copies by the Stinehour Press in Vermont , one of the most prestigious fine presses in the country, and was given a traditional smythe-sewn binding at Acme Bookbinding in Boston , the oldest bindery in America (operating since 1821). This edition contains three supernatural tales by Dawson that were not in the rare Doxey edition of 1897, as well as a good deal of supplementary material by others, including a long introductory essay that provides biographical, historical and critical background for these remarkable ghost stories. For all the details, as well as ordering information, please go to our Dawson page.

UPCOMING TITLES:

(Release order for the following is not settled.)

Bullett, MOMENTS OF ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT.

E. Thelmar, THE MANIAC (illustrated by Mahlon Blaine).

Bird, SPELL-BOUND.

Armour, SWEPT AND GARNISHED.

Capes, LOST BAGGAGE.

Frankish, DR. CUNLIFFE.

NOTE:

It was a pleasure to meet all those at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year from November 1-4, 2007, at the Saratoga Convention Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. Info can be found at: www.lastsfa.org/wfc2007/

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

Thomas Loring & Co. is a small-press publisher dedicated to bringing back into print the work of both familiar and unfamiliar authors of weird and supernatural fiction from the period of, roughly, 1850-1950. Print runs and prices of our books will be commensurate with the offerings of other small presses specializing in this genre. We are confident that much remains for the publisher and reader who are not afraid to reach out for the exotic and the obscure, as well as that which has been overlooked because it strikes some as not exotic or obscure enough. We will take it as part of our mission to leave the well-marked trails of the genre and plunge into the forest to fetch back treasures from both ends of this spectrum of familiarity, at the same time maintaining the highest possible standards of literary excellence.

One of the things that continues to draw us to this genre and this period is the visual charm of the books: the decorative bindings, the lurid dust jackets, the atmospheric illustrations, the odd details of book design and production. We will be making an effort to preserve visually the period flavor and eccentricities of each of our projects rather than tucking them into a bed of Procrustean design, and we hope our books will come to be valued for their containers as well as their contents.

All of our editions will have critical introductions designed to help illuminate the material.

Written words are no more alive than scraps of copper wire until they are connected with the reader: printed, published, read, understood. Then they jolt us to life with a pleasure that tingles or shocks or glows. We look forward to doing our part to restore this curious circuitry between old authors and new readers.

John Pinkney

Robert Eldridge