Studies of Death
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| Author | Count Stenbock |
“Book Descriptions: First printing of this edition, a reprint of the very rare 1894 first edition issued by David Nutt. Octavo, original white cloth blocked in black with a gothic scene reproducing the cover design of the original. 182 pp. Limited to 300 numbered copies, although actually only 296 were issued due to a printer's error. This edition bears a new Introduction by David Tibet and reproduces a photograph of Count Stenbock in life as well as his tombstone. In addition to the seven tales in the original edition there are three additional stories collected here.
¶ Supernatural tales, including The True Story of a Vampire and The Other Side, a previously uncollected werewolf story. During his lifetime the eccentric Count Eric Stenbock published a single collection of short stories, Studies of Death. These seven tales, at once feverish, morbid, and touching, are a key work of English decadence and the Yellow Nineties. This disquieting collection, long out of print, is here presented for the first time in paperback.
W.B.Yeats called Stenbock: "Scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men." Arthur Symons saw him as "bizarre, fantastic, feverish, eccentric, extravagant, morbid and perverse."
In a short life - he died at 36 in 1895 - he so impressed himself upon his contemporaries that the legends they tell of him in memoirs and anecdotes far outstrip the attention given to his writings.
Studies of Death: Romantic Tales appeared in 1894, ornamented with a striking frontispiece by its author. The seven stories reveal an original imagination and a spry, urbane style quite removed from the melancholy murmurings of the Count's verse.
Towards the last the Count was mentally as well as physically ill. At Withdeane Hall he terrified the domestic staff with his persecution complex and his delirium tremens. On his travels he had been escorted, and with him went a dog, a monkey and a life-size doll. He was convinced that the doll was his son and referred to it as 'le Petit comte'. Every day it had to be brought to him, and when it was not there he would ask for news of its health.
He was buried at the Brighton Catholic Cemetery. Before burial the heart was extracted and sent to Estonia & placed among the Stenbock monuments in the church at Kusal. It was preserved in some fluid in a glass urn in a cupboard built into the wall of the church. At the time of his death, his uncle and heir, far away in Esbia, saw an apparition of his tear-stained face at his study window.
On the day of his death the Count, drunk and furious, had tried to strike someone with a poker and toppled into a grate.
-- R. B. Russell
Contents Include: Hylas; Narcissus; Death of a Vocation; Viol D'Amour; Egg of the Albatross; True Story of a Vampire; Worm of Luck; The Other Side; Translations from Balzac -- Christ in Flanders; A Passion in the Desert.
Limited Ed. of 300 Copies ~ UK Import”
