Algernon Blackwood

Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (now part of south-east London, then part of north-west Kent). Between 1871 and 1880, he lived at Crayford Manor House, Crayford[4] and he was educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas."[5] After he read the work of a Hindu sage left behind at his parents' house, he developed an interest in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies.[6] Blackwood had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada, where he also operated a hotel for six months, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for The New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher.[7]

Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.[8]

Jack Sullivan stated that "Blackwood's life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn't steeping himself in occultism, including Rosicrucianism, or Buddhism he was likely to be skiing or mountain climbing."[7] Blackwood was a member of one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,[9] as was his contemporary Arthur Machen.[10] Cabalistic themes influence his novel The Human Chord.[11]

His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. In correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Blackwood wrote,[12]

My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness.... Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word "supernatural" seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A "change" in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.

Blackwood wrote an autobiography of his early years, Episodes Before Thirty (1923), and there is a biography, Starlight Man, by Mike Ashley (ISBN 0-7867-0928-6).

Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years.

• H. P. Lovecraft included Blackwood as one of the "Modern Masters" in the section of that name in "Supernatural Horror in Literature".
• Authors who have been influenced by Blackwood's work include William Hope Hodgson,[13] George Allan England,[14] H. P. Lovecraft, H. Russell Wakefield,[15] "L. Adams Beck" (Elizabeth Louisa Moresby),[16] Margery Lawrence,[17] Evangeline Walton,[18] Ramsey Campbell [19] and Graham Joyce.[20]
• In the first draft of his essay "Notes on the Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings", J. R. R. Tolkien stated that he derived the phrase "crack of doom" from an unnamed story by Algernon Blackwood.[21]
• Frank Belknap Long's 1928 story "The Space-Eaters" alludes to Blackwood's fiction.[22]
• Clark Ashton Smith's story "Genius Loci" (1933) was inspired by Blackwood's story "The Transfer".[23]
• The plot of Caitlin R. Kiernan's novel Threshold (2001) is influenced by Blackwood's work.[24] Kiernan has cited Blackwood as an important influence on her writing.[25]
• In The Books in My Life, Henry Miller chose Blackwood's The Bright Messenger as "the most extraordinary novel on psychoanalysis, one that dwarfs the subject."[26]
• Algernon Blackwood appears as a character in the novel The Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey.
• In the PS4 game Until Dawn, the main setting is named Blackwood Pines, as the main antagonist is a Wendigo.

• An early essay on Blackwood's work was "Algernon Blackwood: An Appreciation," by Grace Isabel Colbron (1869–1943), which appeared in The Bookman in February 1915.[27]
• Peter Penzoldt devotes the final chapter of The Supernatural in Fiction (1952) to an analysis of Blackwood's work and dedicates the book "with deep admiration and gratitude, to Algernon Blackwood, the greatest of them all".
• A critical analysis of Blackwood's work appears in Jack Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story From Le Fanu to Blackwood, 1978.
• David Punter has an essay on Blackwood.[28]
• There is a critical essay on Blackwood's work in S. T. Joshi's The Weird Tale (1990).
• Edward Wagenknecht analyses Blackwood's work in his book Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction.[29]
• David Grimbleby, "Algernon Blackwood: A Personal Appreciation". Occulture 1, No 2 [1994]
• Eugene Thacker, in his "Horror of Philosophy" series of books, discusses Blackwood's stories "The Willows" and "The Man Whom The Trees Loved" as examples of how supernatural horror poses philosophical questions regarding the relation between human beings and the "cosmic indifference" of the world.[30]

• List of horror fiction authors
• Religion and mythology
• Tales of Mystery (A 1960s British supernatural television drama series)
• Weird Fiction

• Ashley, Mike (1987). Algernon Blackwood: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-25158-4.
• Ashley, Mike (2001). Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0928-6. US edition of Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood.
• Ashley, Mike (2001). Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood. London: Constable & Robinson Ltd. ISBN 1-84119-417-4. UK edition of Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life.
• Blackwood, Algernon (2002). Episodes Before Thirty. New York: Turtle Point Press. ISBN 1-885586-83-3. Modern reissue of subject's memoir; originally published in 1923 (London: Cassell & Co.).
• Burleson, Donald. "Algernon Blackwood's 'The Listener: A Hearing'". Studies in Weird Fiction 5 (Spring 1989), pp. 15–19.
• Colombo, John Robert. "Blackwood's Books: A Bibliography Devoted to Algernon Blackwood" Toronto Hounslow Press 1981 ISBN 0-88882-055-0
• Colombo, John Robert. (ed) Algernon Blackwood's Canadian Tales of Terror Lake Eugenia, Ontario Battered Silicon Dispatch Box 2004 ISBN 1-55246-605-1
• Goddin, Jeffrey. "Subtle Perceptions: The Fantasy Novels of Algernon Blackwood" in Darrell Schweitzer (ed) Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction, Gillette NJ: Wildside Press, 1986, pp. 94–103.
• Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists, First Series. Ed. George M. Johnson. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
• Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". Dictionary of Literary Biography. British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880–1914. Ed. William F. Naufftus. Detroit: Gale, 1995.
• Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood". New Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Johnson, George M. "Algernon Blackwood’s Modernist Experiments in Psychical Detection". Formal Investigations: Aesthetic Style in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Detective Fiction. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2007. pp. 29–51.
• Johnson, George M. "The Other Side of Edwardian Fiction: Two Forgotten Fantasy Novels of 1911". Wormwood: Literature of the fantastic, supernatural and decadent. UK, No. 16 (Spring 2011) 3–15.
• Joshi, S. T. (1990). The Weird Tale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. pp. 87–132, 236–38, 246–48, 266–69. ISBN 0-292-79057-0.
• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. pp. 47–49. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.

• Goddin, Jeffrey. "Subtle Perceptions: The Fantasy Novels of Algernon Blackwood" in Darrell Schweitzer, ed. Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction. Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 1996, 94-103.
• Gilbert, Stuart. "Algernon Blackwood, Novelist and Mystic". Transition No 35 (July 1935).
• Letson, Russell Francis J. "The Approaches to Mystery: The Fantasies of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood." Dissertation Abstracts International, 36 (1976): 8047A (Southern Illinois University).
• Sullivan, Jack. Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1978.
• Wagenknecht, Edward. Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991, Chapter Four.

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Algernon Blackwood

• Works by Algernon Blackwood at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Algernon Blackwood at Internet Archive
• Works by Algernon Blackwood at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Fantastic Fiction Algernon Blackwood page
• Spitzer Interview: Adapting The Willows
• Collection of Blackwood Stories
• Algernon Blackwood Quotes
• Algernon Blackwood at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Algernon Blackwood at Library of Congress Authorities, with 76 catalogue records
• Play Starlight Express at Great War Theatre