Destinies.
Normanby (Henry)
Publication details: Sisley's, n.d. [but 1908,]
Rare Book
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Bookseller Notes
A scarce book, with no institutional holdings shown outside of the UK legal deposit libraries. Normanby's stories are brief and with a portentous handling of the supernatural. One of its stories, 'The First-Nighter', has the distinction of having been anthologised in Ramsey Campbell's 'Uncanny Banquet' but the book is principally of note for having been reviewed, rather scathingly, by the young Virginia Woolf (then Virginia Stephen) in the Times Literary Supplement of April 23rd 1908. Woolf contrasts Normanby's brash effects with those of Henry James, and considers that 'a great number of these stories were meant to be read swiftly in a train, and to preserve them in a book is to imprison them unkindly'.