The Violet Apple news

Douglas A. Anderson on the other David Lindsay

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In his Lesser-Known Writers blog, Douglas A. Anderson (who has made many valuable contributions to David Lindsay scholarship, including the publication of Lindsay's "Christmas Play", and the Tartarus Press edition of The Haunted Woman), writes about the other David Lindsay, a writer later known as David T. Lindsay, who produced 18 novels between 1936 and 1940. Apparently, at one point, there was some confusion about whether David T. Lindsay was the same man as the author of A Voyage to Arcturus. Anderson unravels this scholarly knot and looks at some of David T.'s novels with SF/fantasy themes in this blog entry.

The Haunted Woman serialised on Brighton and Hove Community Radio

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

An audio version of The Haunted Woman has been serialised on Brighton & Hove Community Radio. Read by Janina Karpinska and edited by Alan J Cannon, it's an excellent, well-produced reading, complete with incidental music. It's of course fitting it should be broadcast via Brighton & Hove Community Radio, as the novel is set in Brighton, as well as nearby Worthing and Steyning. It was broadcast live on Thursday mornings, but episodes in their edited form can be listened to, or downloaded, at Archive.org. It is now complete, in eleven parts (at Archive.org: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, & 11). There is also a Facebook page.

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction third edition online

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and David Langford, is now live, and can be accessed for free, online. The entry for David Lindsay was written by John Clute and Lee Weinstein, and is a welcome expansion on the more bare-bones entry found in the encyclopedia's second edition. There's now even an entry on Lindsay's brother, under his pen name, Alexander Crawford.

Facsimile dustjacket of The Haunted Woman

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC create and sell reproductions of dust jackets for rare and collectable books, with over 7,700 reproduction jackets available at the moment. Included in that number is one for the original edition of David Lindsay's The Haunted Woman, which you can see (and order) from the company here.

Phillip Pullman at the BHA Conference 2011

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Phillip Pullman mentions David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus as the only fantasy novel he likes in this interview conducted by Andrew Copson as part of the British Humanist Association's 2011 Conference, prior to Pullman being presented with an award for services to Humanism. The interview is available as a podcast by the POD Delusion, here.

It's nice, of course, to have Lindsay's work promoted by one of the most successful fantasy authors of recent times — Pullman even mentions the fact that Lindsay wrote novels other than Arcturus! — though it's a pity it has to be part of a general trashing of all fantasy fiction because some of it is bad. (As always, genre fiction is assumed synonymous with its worst, literary fiction with its best works. He dismisses Tolkien, too.) Pullman also discusses his own works, including why the film of The Golden Compass is unlikely to be followed by any adaptations of the other two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy.