Publishers of 19th and early 20th century literature with an emphasis on the fantastic, the speculative, the unusual, the occult and the eldritch.

I N P R I N T

I Am the Man

Emma Frances Dawson

An Itinerant House and Other Ghost Stories

Collected supernatural fiction

(lxiv + 266 pp.; cloth-bound; US $49 /25 pounds sterling; 500 copies; ISBN

0-9800445-0-2)

"… head and shoulders above any writer on this coast with whose works I have acquaintance." -- Ambrose Bierce

"… among the most original of the Bay Area writers." -- E. F. Bleiler

"… author of the most distinctive ghost stories written by an American woman in the late nineteenth century." -- from introduction to Thomas Loring edition.

CONTENTS AND SPECIAL FEATURES:

· collected supernatural fiction of author, including unabridged reprint of all ten stories in AN ITINERANT HOUSE, 1897 (all of them supernatural) PLUS three ghost stories by Dawson from periodicals never before appearing in book form PLUS translation by Dawson of a weird tale from the German

· all ten illustrations by Ernest C. Peixotto from the original edition of AN ITINERANT HOUSE

· frontis with portrait of author, photo of her grave marker, and facsimile of her signature

· facsimile of prospectus for the original Doxey edition

· 18,000-word introductory essay with biographical, historical and critical material

· appreciation of Dawson by Ambrose Bierce

· gilt-stamped pictorial cloth binding similar to original edition

· 500 numbered copies; 25 deluxe copies with marbled endpapers, gilt top edge, numbered and signed by publisher

The scarcity of Dawson's An Itinerant House in its original 1897 edition has made it difficult until now to evaluate her work, making it a subject of whispers, rumors and misunderstanding. Her work was well-appreciated by the more astute of her contemporaries on the San Francisco literary scene, most notably Ambrose Bierce. But the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed most copies of her book, all her manuscripts, and ended her own writing career. Since then, she and her work have dwelt in a twilight existence which this new edition will help illuminate.

The Thomas Loring edition reprints the contents of the original edition (including the superb black and white line drawings by Ernest C. Peixotto), collects her other supernatural tales, and adds helpful critical material from other sources. The introduction, based on a year of research into primary sources, clears away many myths about Dawson's life, about when and where she was born, how she lived, and how she died. She was an enigmatic and reclusive woman, yet she inspired great loyalty and affection among her friends. She was cosmopolitan yet intensely patriotic, highly cultured yet modest, dutiful yet independent, a beautiful and fascinating woman who never married, and she bore the difficulties and disappointments of her life with a wry, self-deprecating humor. Her sense of the tragic and the inexplicable went straight into her stories. Even here she displayed a curious paradox. All of the fiction she wrote was supernatural -- she was obviously fascinated by the genre -- yet she seems to have never written fiction except at the prodding of an editor or publisher. With more encouragement from the marketplace or private patronage, she could have become one of the major voices of American supernatural fiction. Even as it is, the small body of work she left behind -- work that bewildered most readers of her day because it followed none of the current trends and adhered only to her own subtle aesthetic -- can now help make the case that her itinerant shade deserves a permanent place in the house of American letters.

N A V I G A T I O N

HOME

IN PRINT

Emma Frances Dawson

AN ITINERANT HOUSE

SUMMARY OF FORTHCOMING TITLES

Bernard Capes

LOST BAGGAGE

H. Frankish

DR. CUNLIFFE -- INVESTIGATOR

Mary Ann Bird

SPELL-BOUND

Gerald Bullett

ENCHANTMENT & DISENCHANTMENT

“E. Thelmar”

Illus. by Mahlon Blaine

THE MANIAC

Donald Armour

SWEPT & GARNISHED

Contact

John Pinkney

PO Box 15163

Portland, ME 04112

207-781-6080 pinkney@thomasloring.com

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A n I t i n e r a n t S e a C h a n t e y

“A Gracious Visitation,” the longest story in this collection, concerns a visit by some Russian seamen to the narrator at her house on Russian Hill. In the original edition — and reprinted in the Thomas Loring edition — are three short musical passages, sections of an old sea chantey. which can be heard by clicking on the respective links to the right.

Special thanks to David Reiser for his arrangement and performance of these musical passages.

“The first time so faint and far that I could not tell it from the hauntings of the inner ear known to all musicians, the chance strains evoked for me by the differing keys of the fog signals.”

“The second time I heard it with quick remembrance. An old French sea-song which Richepin calls that master-piece of an unknown, a revelation of man and high soul-tides; the words are few, the notes but five, the refrain only traderi tra lanlaire et trouloula, yet, as he says, all the sea, the breath of space, cries from wrecks, the mirth and the terror of the sailor’s hard life are there, and heard at sunset it has the melancholy grandeur of an evocation of Night. How often my husband and I had together listened to it, the favorite “chantez” of a French sailor who voyaged with him for years! Ah! that very day the Russian priest had read in my face a famished heart.”

“The third time, the name flashed upon me, the Complaint of the Three Mariners. Close by came men’s voices in cooing, sputtering Russ. Sailors often climbed up the hill to look at the sea, as actors enjoy the theatre. Now, the words came back to me:

‘We were two, we were three,

We were three mariners

Of Groix.’”

[Play all three pieces.]