QAnnotated Bibliography of Short Stories
by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

arranged by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

   

   

I'm a considerable fan of Q. I came to him through his ghost stories, but his tales of the sea & of Cornwall generally, the criminist tales, & his evocations of historical times, are all hugely rewarding. Many though his stories are, Q's period of prolificity was mainly early in his life. He soon gave up fiction to concentrate on issues of education in England.

So here are Sir Arthur A. Quiller-Couch's short story collections, with a few notes attached. The collections are arranged alphabetically. The contents are arranged in the order given within each book.


CORPORAL SAM & Other Stories. Ln: Smith Elder, 1910. There is one supernatural tale, "Mutual Exchange, Limited," regarding personality exchange. But the best stories are the Cornwall Elizabethan tales with swashbuckling or military themes. A rather rare volume.
THE DELECTABLE DUCHY, Stories Studies & Sketches. Ln: Cassell, 1893. NY: Macmillan, 1893. NY: Scribners, 1898. A classic collection chiefly Cornwall stories historical to contemporary. Includes fantasies of St. Piran.
THE HORROR ON THE STAIR & Other Weird Tales. Ashcroft, BC: Ash-Tree Press, 2000. Edited with an introduction by S. T. Joshi, this gathers a good 80% of Q's supernatural & fantastic shorts in one volume. Cover illustration by Paul Lowe for "The Roll-Call of the Reef."
I SAW THREE SHIPS & Other Winter's Tales. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1892 wraps. Ln: Cassell, 1893. NY: Scribners, 1902. Tissued frontis engraving. The title novella has a soundtrack of sorts, if you want to imagine you're hearing the christmas song "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" while you are reading this splendid historical sea yarn, for Q did also write the carol. "A Blue Pantomime" & "The Haunted Dragoon" are substantial weird pieces. Scarce.
IA, & Other Tales. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1896. Wraps, issued in Germany to secure European copyright. The title novella was originally issued alone as Ia, A Love Story (NY: Scribners, 1895. Ln: Cassell, 1896) & is an expansion of the shorter tale "Once Aboard the Lugger" in Old Fires & Profitable Ghosts. Only "The Roll-Call of the Reef" is supernatural.
THE LAIRD'S LUCK & Other Fireside Tales. Ln: Cassell, 1901. NY: Scribners, 1901. The title story is a brilliant weird tale. "Phoebus on Halzaphron" is a fantasy of Apollo. Q was wonderful at telling sea stories & this volume has several examples.
MERRY GARDEN & Other Stories, Ln: Methuen, 1907. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1907 wraps. "The Bend of the Road" is an excellent weird story about dreams bleeding into reality. The rest are criminist & historical tales of Cornwall. Scarce.
MERRY GARDEN & Other Stories, Ln: Dent, 1929. This edition was sufficiently altered to qualify as a separate collection. Four stories have been dropped from the earlier version, & five stories added, resulting in two weird inclusions "The Bend of the Road" & "Mutual Exchange, Limited."
MORTALLONE & AUNT TRINIDAD Tales of the Spanish Main. This consists of three tales, a novella, a novel, & a short ghost story, in that order. The novel Aunt Trinidad is about a woman pirate, quite cool. Scarce.
NEWS FROM THE DUCHY. Bristol: Arrowsmith & London: Simpkin Marshall Hamilton Kent, 1913. In "Not Here, O Apollo" set about 1700, a ship wrecked on the Cornwall coast bares the god Apollo. Quite a tale! "Our Lady of Gwithian" is a first-rate fantasy about the Virgin Mary. "The Wren" is an interesting legend. Many great tales of sailors & the sea. Scarce.
NOUGHTS & CROSSES, Stories, Studies & Sketches. Ln: Cassell, 1891. NY: Scribners, 1898. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1891 wraps. Q's first collection, with a goodly number of fantastic tales are sprinkled through this one ("Psyche," "'Doubles' & Quits," "Old Aeson," "Beside the Bee-Hive," "A Dark Mirror," & "The Magic Show," plus the rationalized "The Small People". There's also a tale of Gabriel Foot the highwayman & other Cornwall historical tales of adventure, crime, or the sea.

OLD FIRES & PROFITABLE GHOSTS, A Book of Stories. Ln: Cassell, 1900; NY: Scribner, 1900. A good bundle of ghostly tales & fantasies are scattered through this collection, two of his best known ("A Pair of Hands" & "The Seventh Man") plus "Oceanus," "The Room of Mirrors." "The Mystery of Joseph Laquedem" regards the Wandering Jew, & likely the best in the collection is the witchraft tale "The Lady of the Ship." Q regarded this mainly a ghost story collection, introducing it as a book of "revenants," but he clearly means revenants more broadly than just ghosts, counting as he does the prostitute of "Which?" & certain historical figures of tales almost true. "Once Aboard the Lugger" is an earlier version of a tale expanded & published separately as Ia: A Love Story after the manner of Thomas Hardy. Some regard Old Fires & PRofitable Ghosts Q's most representative & best collection.
Q'S MYSTERY STORIES, Twenty-four Stories from the Works of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Ln: Dent, 1937. This was Q's own selection drawn from earlier books, with particular focus on his ghost stories & fantasies. In his Preface he notes that many such tales came to him from out of dreams.
SELECTED SHORT STORIES. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957. Wraps. 15 stories selected from earlier collections.


SELECTED STORIES. Ln: Dent, 1921. NY: Dutton, 1921. I seem not to have kept this one in my personal collection of Q, probably because it was redundant to other books. I'll add the exact content next time I run across a copy.


SHAKESPEARE'S CHRISTMAS & Other Stories. Ln: Smith Elder, 1904. NY: Longmans Green, 1905. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1906 wraps. The criminist tale of "The Man Behind the Curtain" features Q's series character Gabriel Foot, highwayman. The collection is over all one of the finest for historical crime tales & of special interest for settings in the Elizabethan underworld. Eight inserted illustration plates. Scarce.
SHORTER STORIES. Ln: Dent, 1944. A posthumous selection arranged by Q himself shortly before his death, about half the content supernatural or fantastic with several of these lacking in the modern Ash-Tree Press edition of collected ghost stories.
TWO SIDES OF THE FACE: Midwinter Tales. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1903. Macmillan, 1903. NY: Scribner, 1903. . "The Horror on the Stair" is supernatural, but the better stories are the historical adventures which have swashbuckling verve.
WANDERING HEATH, Stories, Studies & Sketches. Ln: Cassell, 1896. NY: Scribners, 1896.
The Napoleonic ghost story "Roll-Call of the Reef" is perhaps Q's most famous. "The Legend of Sir Dinar" is superior heroic fantasy. "My Grandfather Hendry Watty" & "Widdershins" are rather surreal weird tales. There are also some fine historical crime tales such as "The Captain from Bath" alleging to be an extract from the memoir of a highwayman. "The Bishop of Eucalyptus" is, of all things, an American western. More typical are the sea adventures such as "Visitors of the Gunnel Rock: A Lightship Idyll." "Jetsom" & the majority of the "Prologue" are poems.
THE WESTCOTES, IA & TOM TIDDLERS GROUND. Ln: Dent, 1928. Omnibus of the novellas Westcotes (Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1902; Philadelphia: Coates, 1902), Ia (NY: Scribners, 1895. Ln: Cassell, 1896) & a tale from News from the Duchy (Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1913)
THE WHITE WOLF & Other Fireside Tales. Ln: Methuen, 1902. NY: Scribner, 1902. The title story is a wonderfu Viking fantasy. "John & the Ghosts" is a most effective haunted comedy. Other fantasies & weirds include "The Talking Ships," "The Bridals of Ysselmonde," & "The Haunted Yacht." Several noteworthy sea stories, as usual for Q, & tales of criminist interest. One of the tales was reprinted as a rare slim tourist booklet Polperro Privateers; or, The Capture of Bergomeister Van der Werf (Polperro: Polpero Press, 1927).

   




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