James Platt

James Platt wrote Tales of the Supernatural as a shilling shocker for Simpkin Marshall in 1894. The six stories are brisk, magazine-shaped supernatural tales from the late Victorian period, without the antiquarian padding of the James school.

About

Before his work on the Oxford English Dictionary, James Platt Jr. issued this 1894 shilling shocker: six romantic supernatural tales of sigils, witchcraft, and Faustian debt in the vein of the Victorian penny dreadful. It is a rare instance of a scholar-turned-lexicographer trying his hand at lurid fiction without James’s donnish restraint.

Edition Details

• Limited to 250 numbered copies; reissue of James Platt's 1894 Simpkin Marshall shilling shocker.
• Bound in cloth in a dust jacket; cover Tales of the Supernatural by Austin Osman Spare (WorldCat: Head with green hair in the depths of hell).
• Foreword by Richard Dalby; afterword by William R. Platt (the author's brother, originally 1910).
• Plates by Jim Cawthorn (copyright page spelling; WorldCat gives Cawthorne); the illustrations were drawn for a projected booklet entitled The Witches' Sabbath (c. 1975), per the copyright page (FantLab).
• ISBN, foreword, and story sequence from WorldCat; month of publication and contents collation from FantLab photographs.
• WorldCat record for collation and contributor credits.