Complete Science Fantasy of Hugh Walpole

A New Zealand-born English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, but his works have been neglected since his death.


Contents

The Secret City

Jeremy

Jeremy and Hamlet

The Dark Forest

The Cathedral

The Wooden Horse

The Captives

The Golden Scarecrow

The Duchess of Wrexe

Fortitude

The Prelude to Adventure

Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation by Joseph Hergesheimer

The Gods and Mr. Perrin


The Captives-

These people are captives in a religious environment, sometimes meanly orthodox, sometimes strangely but fervently fanatical. The love story is of the reunion of a man and woman after many wanderings and an unhappy marriage. One is especially interested in the environment.


The Cathedral-

A notable novel of power and interest, marking the close of an era ending with the Queen's jubilee in 1897. Its action covers less than a year. The central theme is the Polchester cathedral, splendid and massive, "become a god demanding his own rites and worshippers." Against the background of its magnificence and petty village life is fought the duel for supremacy between simple-minded, autocratic archdeacon Brandon, symbolizing the arrogance of the church, and Canon Ronder, used by destiny as a blind, impersonal force to break in pieces the old order to make way for the new.


The Dark Forest-

The story of two Englishmen with a Russian Red Cross unit during the campaigns against the Austrians.


Fortitude-

The story of one Peter Westcott, from childhood to maturity, taking us from the grim home in Cornwall to a disreputable Devonshire school, and on to a boarding-house in Bloomsbury, to poverty in the East End, to success in literature, to love and marriage, and at last to a catastrophe by which most would mark the end.


The Golden Scarecrow-

Walpole's courage in the face of the widest skepticism is nowhere more daring than in The Golden Scarecrow, a collection of sympathetic sketches for grown-ups, of episodes in the lives of ten children all living about a quiet old square in London.


Jeremy-

The story of one year, the eighth, in the life of a happy, normal but imaginative little boy, growing up with his two sisters and his dog, Hamlet, in the Cornish cathedral town of Polchester-by-the-sea, thirty years ago. A delightfully humorous chronicle, told with an affection and understanding which mark it as autobiography.


The Prelude to Adventure-

English college life forms the background of this introspective study and self analysis of the mind of a man who had committed homicide. No one knows of his deed, and he has few qualms because he had ridden the world of a filthy human being who was clever enough to appear decent. But his conscience begins to work and reveals to him that his deed has put him out of touch with human society, that he is an outlaw, and that he must win his way back to citizenship. A thread of romance is woven thru the sombre introspection.


The Secret City-

Walpole's contribution to the 'Petersburg myth,' based on his work for the Red Cross in Russia during World War I, follows The Dark Forest, and, like that other work, is dominated by the sinister figure of Dr. Demyonov.