L. A. Lewis

Squadron Leader L.A. Lewis (Leslie Allin Lewis, 1899–1961) published Tales of the Grotesque in 1934 in Philip Allan’s “Creeps” series. Richard Dalby, who tracked him down decades later, ranked him among the best British writers of macabre fiction in the short form.

About

L.A. Lewis’s sole collection, issued in Philip Allan’s “Creeps” series in 1934, vanished from bibliographies for decades before Richard Dalby rediscovered the author. The tales—“Lost Keep,” hybrid beasts, pipes of chaos, iron swine—are compact nightmares in a register between Hodgson and the interwar shilling shocker; Dalby ranked Lewis among the finest British writers of macabre short fiction.

Edition Details

• Limited to 300 numbered copies; expanded reissue of Tales of the Grotesque (1934).
• Bound in cloth in a dust jacket; dust-jacket artwork by Steven Stapledon; frontispiece by Andrew King.
• Introduction by Richard Dalby.