Oliver Onions

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For the Italian music group Oliver Onions, see Guido & Maurizio De Angelis.
Oliver Onions.

George Oliver Onions[1] (13 November 1873 – 9 April 1961) was an English novelist who published over forty novels and story collections.

Contents

Life [edit]

Originally trained as a commercial artist, he worked as a designer of posters and books, and as a magazine illustrator, before starting his career in writing. The first editions of his novels were published with dust jackets bearing full-colour illustrations painted by Onions himself. He married the writer Berta Ruck in 1909 and they had two sons, Arthur (born 1912) and William (born 1913). Onions legally changed his name to George Oliver in 1918, but continued to publish under the name Oliver Onions.

Onions wrote detective fiction, social comedy and historical fiction; Poor Man's Tapestry (1946) and its prequel, Arras of Youth (1949) are about the adventures of a juggler, Robert Gandelyn, in the fourteenth century.[2] Onions wrote two science fiction novels: New Moon (1918) about a utopian Britain, and The Tower of Oblivion (1921), featuring a middle-aged man who recedes back to his youth.[3] Onions wrote several collections of ghost stories, of which the best known is Widdershins (1911). [4][5] It includes the novella The Beckoning Fair One, widely regarded as one of the best in the genre of horror fiction, especially psychological horror.[4] On the surface, this is a conventional haunted house story: an unsuccessful writer moves into rooms in an otherwise empty house, in the hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. The story can be read as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious and possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject's point of view. The precise description of the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind is terrifying in either case. Another theme, shared with others of Onions' stories, is a connection between creativity and insanity; in this view, the artist is in danger of withdrawing from the world altogether and losing himself in his creation. Another noted story from Widdershins is "Rooum", about an engineer pursued by a mysterious entity.[5][6]

The title novella of The Painted Face (1929) is about a Greek girl who is the reincarnation of an ancient spirit; Ashley describes it as "one of the finest works in the genre".[6] The collection also contains "The Master of the House", a story involving a werewolf and black magic.[5]

Onions was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his 1946 novel Poor Man's Tapestry.

Reception and Influence [edit]

Onions' work has generally been well received. Discussing ghost stories, Algernon Blackwood described The Beckoning Fair One as "the most horrible and beautiful ever written on those lines".[6] J.B. Priestley described Widdershins as a "book of fine creepy stories".[7] Robert Aickman named The Beckoning Fair One as "one of the (possibly) six great masterpieces in the field".[6] E. F. Bleiler lauded Widdershins as "a landmark book in the history of supernatural fiction".[8] An Irish Times review of Arras of Youth stated "Mr. Onions writes limpid and often beautiful prose".[2] On the other hand, H.P. Lovecraft's assessment of Onions' work was negative; in a 1936 letter to J. Vernon Shea, Lovecraft stated "I have Onions' Ghosts in Daylight...I didn't care much for the various tales".[9]

Karl Edward Wagner's short story, "In the Pines" (1973) is a homage to Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One".[10]

Partial bibliography [edit]

Novels [edit]

  • The Compleat Bachelor (1900)
  • Tales from a Far Riding (1902)
  • The Odd-Job Man (1903)
  • The Drakestone (1906)
  • Admiral Eddy [and other tales] (1907)
  • Pedlar's Pack (1908)
  • Draw in your Stool [Short stories] (1909)
  • The Exception (1910)
  • In Accordance with the Evidence (1910)
  • Good Boy Seldom:A romance of advertisement (1911)
  • A Crooked Mile (1914)
  • The Debit Account (1913)
  • The Two Kisses. A tale of a very modern courtship (1913)
  • Gray Youth (1913) (US omnibus of The Two Kisses and A Crooked Mile)
  • The Story of Louie (1913)
  • Mushroom Town (1914)
  • The New Moon: A Romance of Reconstruction (1918)
  • A Case in Camera (1920)
  • The Tower of Oblivion (1921)
  • Peace in Our Time (1923)
  • Whom God hath Sundered (Omnibus containing In Accordance with the Evidence, The Debit Account and

The Story of Louie)(1925)

  • The Spite of Heaven (1926)
  • Cut Flowers (1927)
  • Little Devil Doubt (1929)
  • The Open Secret (1930)
  • A Certain Man (1932)
  • Catalan Circus (1934)
  • Hand of Kornelius Voyt (1939)
  • The Italian Chest, and other stories (1939)
  • Cockcrow; or, Anybody's England (1940)
  • The Story of Ragged Robyn (1945)
  • Poor Man's Tapestry (1946)
  • Arras of Youth (1949)
  • A Penny for the Harp (1952)
  • A Shilling to Spend (1965)

Ghost story collections (general collections omitted) [edit]

  • Back 'O The Moon (1906)
  • Widdershins (1911)
  • Ghosts in Daylight (1924)
  • The Painted Face (1929)
  • The Collected Ghost Stories (Nicholson & Watson (London), 1935)
  • Bells Rung Backward (1953)
  • The Collected Ghost Stories (Tartarus Press (Carlton-in-Coverdale, North Yorkshire), 2000; expanded edition)
  • The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions (Wordsworth Editions (London), 2010; ISBN 978-1-84022-640-9)

References [edit]

  1. ^ Pronounced by his family as in the vegetable, not oh-NY-ons.[citation needed]
  2. ^ a b "Recent Fiction by "B.M"" (Review of Arras of Youth), The Irish Times, July 23rd, 1949.
  3. ^ E. F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press, 1990. (p.575-76). ISBN 9780873384162.
  4. ^ a b Keith Neilson, "Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions, The" in Frank N. Magill, ed. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 1. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. (pp.294-299). ISBN 0-89356-450-8
  5. ^ a b c Norman Donaldson, "Oliver Onions", in E.F. Bleiler, ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers. New York: Scribner's, 1985. pp.505-512. ISBN 0684178087
  6. ^ a b c d Mike Ashley, "Oliver Onions:The Man at the Edge" in Darrell Schweitzer, ed. Discovering Classic Horror Fiction I, Starmont House, (p.120-26). ISBN 1-55742-084-X
  7. ^ J.B. Priestley, The Edwardians, Harper and Row, 1970 (p. 129).
  8. ^ E. F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, Kent State University Press, 1983 (p. 392).
  9. ^ Quoted in S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue. Hippocampus Press, 2002 ISBN 0967321573. (p. 108)
  10. ^ "The tale is a retelling of sorts of Oliver Onions’ classic ghost story The Beckoning Fair One (which Wagner references in his story) and it shows how well Wagner understood the mechanics of the horror tale". Stefan Dziemianowicz, Review of Where the Summer Ends and Walk on the Wild Side by Karl Edward Wagner. Locus Magazine, 13 May 2012. Retrieved 24 December 2012.

Sources [edit]

External links [edit]

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