Algernon Blackwood

Life and work

Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (now part of south-east London, but then part of north-west Kent), and between 1871 and 1880 lived at Crayford Manor House, Crayford and was educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas". Blackwood had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada, where he also operated a hotel for six months, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for The New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher.

Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner but also cheerful company.

Jack Sullivan stated that "Blackwood's life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn't steeping himself in occultism, including Rosicrucianism and Buddhism, he was likely to be skiing or mountain climbing." Blackwood was a member of one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as was his contemporary Arthur Machen. Cabalistic themes influence his novel The Human Chord.

His two best known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which climaxes with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. In correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Blackwood wrote

My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness. ... Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word "supernatural" seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A "change" in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.

Blackwood wrote an autobiography of his early years, Episodes Before Thirty (1923), and there is a biography, Starlight Man, by Mike Ashley (ISBN 0-7867-0928-6).

Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was of cerebral thrombosis with arteriosclerosis as contributory. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years.

Legacy

Critical studies

Novels

In sequence of first publication:

Children's novels:

Plays

In sequence of first performance:

Short fiction collections

In sequence of first publication:

Weird fiction

This list of all Blackwood's known short stories in the Weird Fiction vein is presented in sequence of first publication or, where first publication is not traceable, collection:

Children's stories and non-Weird tales

As well as his supernatural tales for adults, Blackwood also wrote a considerable number of children's tales, some supernatural and some not, as well as other pieces for an adult readership that were not in the weird fiction genre. These included love stories and, at the height of the first world war, propaganda pieces.

Nonfiction

Aside from well over a hundred published articles, essays, prefaces, and book reviews which remain to be collected, Blackwood authored only one nonfiction book, a memoir of his youth:

Radio

A radio adaption by Roy Winsor of a Blackwood short story was broadcast as "In The Fog" by the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in August 1977. Introduced by E. G. Marshall, the radio play featured Gordon Gould, Martha Greenhouse, William Griffis, and Ian Martin.

A radio adaptation of Blackwood's novella, The Willows was recorded for the BBC and first broadcast in 2005. It was repeated in 2016. The adaptation featured Roger Allam as the narrator.