Description

Borderlands and Otherworlds by Mark Valentine

Hardcover – Tartarus Press – July 2025 – 317 pages

Mark Valentine’s Borderlands and Otherworlds explores supernatural fiction of the 1920s, occult thrillers of the ’30s, and the English Fantastic in the ’40s and ’50s.

He discusses notable names in the field, such as Arthur Machen, Dion Fortune and E.F. Benson, and also lesser-known figures such as J.M.A. Mills, Humphrey Gilkes and Charles Whitton. He offers the reader an understanding of these writers in their wider literary context, drawing out links and resonances between them.

Valentine celebrates the byways of book collecting, such as old monographs found in obscure boxes, noticing unusual details and unexpected stories. Other essays celebrate landscape, legend and lore. The author writes engagingly, with a lightly-worn knowledge, a companionable tone, great enthusiasm and an undercurrent of good humour.