Edited and compiled with Norman Donaldson
The Battered
Silicon Dispatch Box is proud to announce the publication of an eleven-volume
edition of the entire writings of the creator of the immortal Dr. John Evelyn
Thorndyke, the medico-legal investigator of 5a King's Bench Walk, including
pieces not previously collected. This material is supplemented by a new revised
and enlarged edition of Norman Donaldson's fine biography of Freeman and
Thorndyke and also by scholarly essays about the great man, drawn from The
Thorndyke File and elsewhere. Donaldson has also prepared for each Thorndyke
novel (and for the collection of short stories) an introduction and "afterword"
that put into perspective each member of the series as Freeman wrote them (for
the stories are presented here in chronological order of publication), assess
its strengths and weaknesses and examine the ways the author was progressively
learning to master his unusual material to best effect, the aim being to make
the reading – or rereading – of the entire Thorndyke canon a particularly
rewarding experience.
Volume I
Here are the first Thorndyke novels, those offered to the world from
1907 to 1913, beginning with The Red Thumb Mark, a monument of the genre, in
which the medico-legal investigator makes his entrance. Freeman conceived him
many years earlier, and by the beginning of the century had drafted an embryonic
story around him that was delayed in publication for several years. It first
appeared as a long short story in an American magazine in 1911 as "31, New Inn,"
before its publication as a completely rewritten full-length novel, The Mystery
of 31 New Inn. Both versions are included here, and readers, with the aid of
Donaldson's commentaries, can gain insight into Freeman's methods of developing
and deepening his approach. The Eye of Osiris combines the detective
investigation with a love story set amid the mummy cases in the British Museum's
Egyptology department. The first volume concludes with A Silent Witness;
considered by many the finest of the Thorndyke novels, it incorporates a scene
around a furnace, upstairs at No. 5a, in which the cause of death of a murder
victim is successfully established by examination of crematory remains. The year
after this novel's appearance, our author – and, incidentally, his two sons –
were called away to war, and Thorndyke went into retirement for almost a decade.
Bound blue cloth, No Dustjacket, folio size, 422 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-084-3 $75.00
Volume II
Because the first of the Thorndyke short stories, "The Blue Sequin,"
first appeared in December 1908 (and was included a few months later in the
first collection, John Thorndyke's Cases, the chronological series of novels is
interrupted to present here in a single volume every one of the forty short
tales that feature the outstanding medical jurist. Included are the three
stories left out of the well-known London Thorndyke Omnibus, among them the
unusually long tale "The Man with the Nailed Shoes." For many readers, the most
enjoyable stories are those of the "inverted" type, invented by Freeman but of
which he wrote only a handful. In these, the reader sees the crime being
committed and believes no tell-tale clues have been left, only to watch Thorndyke, in the second part, uncover them one by one. In this volume, the
inverted short stories appear ahead of the rest.
Bound blue cloth, folio size,
436 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-086-X $75.00
Volume III
Thorndyke reappeared after World War I, but only when the lukewarm
reception of Freeman's foray into sociology and eugenics (see Vol. VIII below)
caused him to turn back to the stories of which he was such a master. Helen Vardon's Confession (1922), never published in America, is probably the most
difficult Thorndyke title to track down nowadays. Helen, very much the author's
ideal young woman, an amateur worker in precious metals, is eager to make her
own way in the world after a disastrous marriage and the sudden death of her
father. Thorndyke's appearances are few – but significant – and he clears her of
suspicion of murdering her estranged husband. Thorndyke comes back into full
flower in The Cat's Eye, in which his partner is his independent-minded friend
Robert Anstey, K.C. At one point, Thorndyke leads him into an underground
chamber where they risk being engulfed at any moment with poison gas. While his
friend coolly examines the mechanism of the device, Anstey – the narrator –
"cursed his inquiring spirit, for I wanted to get out of this horrible trap."
The Mystery of Angelina Frood is a commentary of sorts on Dickens's unfinished
Mystery of Edwin Drood and especially a correction of a fallacy in Drood
regarding quicklime's effect on the human body. The Shadow of the Wolf (1925) is
one of Freeman's pair of inverted novels. It began life years earlier as the
two-installment magazine story "The Dead Hand" (see Vol.
IX below). As in the
case of "31 New Inn," the reader has the opportunity to compare the methods by
which our author was able to enlarge and enrich the shorter version to produce a
thoroughly enjoyable novel about a murder committed near the Wolf Rock
lighthouse, southwest of Land's End.
Bound blue cloth, folio, 422 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-088-6 $75.00
Volume IV
The Thorndyke novels published between 1926 and '31 include at least
two of Freeman's finest. The D'Arblay Mystery is largely set in the waxwork
studio of the attractive Marion D'Arblay, whose father's murder opens the story.
A Certain Dr. Thorndyke is presented in two parts, the first of which is an
adventure story set in West Africa. In the second part, Thorndyke is called in
to solve a jewel robbery and thereby clear the hero of Part 1, the athletic John
Osmond, of suspicion and allow him to return home and marry his true love.
As a
Thief in the Night is that rarity among this author's mysteries: a genuine
whodunit, with the criminal's identity well hidden and containing a horrifying
scene in Highgate Cemetery in which the young lawyer-narrator spies at midnight
on the exhumation of his dead beloved. Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, the other
inverted novel in the Thorndyke canon, is perhaps the best known of all Freeman's books.
Mr. P. disposes of a blackmailer down a well in his garden and installs a sundial
over it. He produces an apparently foolproof track of his victim's footprints
that lead past his garden gate to a distant woodland. But Thorndyke detects a
crucial oversight; what could this possibly be? In Pontifex, Son & Thorndyke our
narrator is the adventure-loving teenager Jasper Gray, who closely resembles the
author at a corresponding stage of his life. The more serious portion of the
story concerns the disappearance of Sir Edward Hardcastle from his London club
and the subsequent discovery of his body in a remote suburb.
Bound blue cloth, folio size, 489 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-090-8 $75.00
Volume V
The novels of 1932 to '37 include When Rogues Fall Out (Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery) in which Inspector Badger of Scotland Yard is found
murdered in a railway tunnel. Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes introduces the attractive
Pippet family from America, claimants to an English peerage. The story is based
on the real Druce-Portland case, which culminated in 1907 and which revolved
around the putative double life of the Duke of Portland. For the Defence: Dr.
Thorndyke tells of look-alike cousins, one of whom, Andrew, has a shattered
nose. The other is killed by a rock fall on a beach, and Andrew, his nose by
this time reconstructed, is accused of his murder. Thorndyke rescues him without
difficulty from durance vile. The Penrose Mystery is solved by a team of
archaeologists, hired by Thorndyke to dismantle an ancient British barrow,
Julliberrie's Grave. Surprisingly, this fictional digging led to a real-life
excavation of the same burial mound shortly afterwards. The final novel, Felo de
Se? (Death at the Inn), is set in Clifford's Inn, where a friend of the
narrator, a young bank clerk, is found murdered. Oddly enough, the mice that had
earlier infested the Inn have for some time been avoiding the place. Why?
Bound
blue cloth, folio size, 468 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-092-4 $75.00
Volume VI
The final trio of Thorndyke novels appeared from 1938 to'42, and they
are followed here by the four Ashdown collaborations. The Stoneware Monkey opens
with the murder of a constable in a wood but soon moves to the pottery studio
shared by an ill-assorted pair, Peter Gannet and the sinister Mr. Boles. When
human remains are found in the pottery furnace, Thorndyke is called in. Mr.
Polton Explains tells of the early poverty-stricken life of the crinkly-faced
artificer of 5a King's Bench Walk, his training as a clock-maker and his rescue
from near starvation by his future employer and friend. A calendar clock
constructed by the talented young Nathaniel features years later in the
arson-murder of a man with mottled teeth. The final novel in the superb
Thorndyke canon was published just a year before the author's death at 81. The
Jacob Street Mystery (The Unconscious Witness) features the landscape artist Tom
Pedley who, at the opening, is sketching a woodland scene that, unknown to him
at the time, immediately precedes a murder. Soon afterwards, a flirtatious new
neighbour and faux artist, Lotta Schiller, begins to badger him. In due course
she disappears, apparently at the site of an ancient British camp in Epping
Forest.
The first of the four works authored by the pseudonymous "Clifford Ashdown" –
The Adventures of Romney Pringle – was the only one to appear in volume form
during the lifetime of Freeman and his collaborator, Dr. J.J. Pitcairn of the
prison service, whose identity was publicly disclosed only after Freeman's
death. Pringle is an attractive adventurer who takes advantage of a series of
victims usually as dishonest as himself. The Further Adventures is a similar
work of higher quality. The Queen's Treasure never appeared in print at all
until the MS was tracked down to the Pitcairn family and, after thorough
editing, issued by Oswald Train of Philadelphia in 1975. Essentially, it is the
account of a treasure hunt in Kent by two men, recently returned from West
Africa, in competition with one another. Train published From a Surgeon's Diary
in 1977. Less frivolous than the two Pringle series, it recounts a series of
experiences by a hard-working country doctor who, like Pringle (and Pitcairn)
but unlike Freeman, is a keen cyclist.
Bound blue cloth, folio size, 420 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-094-0 $75.00
Volume VII
Here are to be found Freeman's two serious novels, followed by what
his publishers, in rejecting it, called "a horrible book." It has been condemned
by most readers (but not all) as unworthy of Freeman, creator of the Great
Fathomer. Also included are his three ventures into picaresque fiction.
The volume opens with The Golden Pool (1905), the first work of fiction
published by our author under his real name, and – especially for readers
interested in Freeman's West African experiences – a thoroughly enjoyable book.
It follows up on facts and legends picked up by the always perceptive Freeman
during his late twenties while stationed on the Gold Coast. It is an exciting
and tragic tale of gold retrieved from a river bed and melted down in a hidden cave by blinded slaves. Some of the chief incidents can be found, in a rather
different form, in Freeman's Ashantí book (see Vol. viii below). The Unwilling
Adventurer (1913) is very much a sea-going adventure, in which the young hero is
shanghaied and forced to serve in the Navy under his villainous cousin's
command. We meet the remarkable Captain Parradine, a pirate chief of refined and
literary tastes The book is comparable in quality with The Golden Pool.
The "horrible book," published first (in America) as The Uttermost Farthing in
1914 and not until six years later in London as A Savant's Vendetta, chronicles
the search for his wife's killer by a certain Professor Challoner, who knows the
murderous burglar can be identified by his ringed hair – a rare condition – and
eagerly entices over a score of housebreakers to his home, summarily dispatches
them one by one and asks questions afterwards. Sometimes he giggles as he plays
cat and mouse with his victims before finishing them off and adding them to his
collections of skeletons and shrunken heads. Although many, perhaps most, feel
that the the book gives tastelessness a bad name, a strong contrary vote is
registered by the knowledgable E.F. Bleiler, who writes that he and his family
"read it as black humor, a grand-guignol parodic thriller ... one of his best."
The Exploits of Danby Croker (1916), The Surprising Experiences of Mr. Shuttlebury Cobb (1927) and
Flighty Phyllis (1928) were written years before
their collection in volumes and in fact first appeared as magazine serials in
1911, 1913, and 1914. Like all Freeman's non-Thorndyke material, they are
exceedingly difficult to come by. Croker is a rascal with fair hair, who by the
use of black dye can assume a passing likeness to the even more scoundrelly Tom
Nagget; and by the application of peroxide Nagget can of course effect a
contrary transformation. Why they should trouble to do this is beyond reasonable
surmise, but that they should both fall foul of the law is hardly surprising.
Cobb appears in a similar chain of connected episodes which include some
treasure-hunting near Canterbury. Phyllis has a deep contralto voice, which
enables her to assume the identity of her cousin Charlie, a dishonest
man-about-town. Her frivolous devil-may-care style of narration, even when she
is kidnapped and in due course freed by Charlie, who shoots down two of her
captors, has the same chilling effect on the thoughtful reader as that
engendered by Professor Challoner.
Bound green cloth, folio size, approximately 503 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-096-7 $80.00
Volume VIII
Travels and Life in Ashantí and Jáman (1898), Freeman's first book,
centres on his experiences as medical officer and surveyor on an 1888-89
expedition into the little-known interior of West Africa. The party was made up
of two other British officials, a hundred members of the Hausa Constabulary and
two hundred carriers. There were important diplomatic missions to be conducted
with the Kings of Ashantí and Jáman and, as it turned out, perils to be
confronted in which the cool-headedness of the 26-year-old Freeman proved to be
crucial to the survival and safe return of the expedition. The book is
entertainingly written and richly illustrated by photographs and maps, and by
sketches made on the spot by the talented author.
Social Decay and Regeneration (1921) is Freeman's bid to have his eugenic views
taken seriously. The book, which is introduced by Havelock Ellis, makes two main
points: dependence on machines and mass-production is deleterious to human
health and welfare, and eugenic planning is essential to the well-being of the
"race." The author realized the impracticability of segregating "unfit" members
of society and therefore recommended the setting up of a League, which members
would join voluntarily and within which they would lead utopian lives as farmers
and skilled craftsmen. Freeman's hope that his ideas would be enthusiastically
embraced were soon disappointed, and he returned to the task for which he is
best remembered: the authorship of Thorndyke stories. Freeman's articles on
eugenics, assorted articles, essays and book reviews are included in addition to
the non-Thorndyke short stories in The Great Portrait Mystery.
Bound green
cloth, folio size with 3 maps in colour, over 400 pages.
ISBN 1-55246-098-3
$80.00
Volume XI
The final volume of the Omnibus Edition features Oliver Mayo's 1980
biography, R. Austin Freeman: The Anthropologist at Large. Like Donaldson, Mayo
reviews Freeman's Thorndyke stories and other fiction, but gives special
attention to the African and sociological works. He is well qualified to discuss
the author's prescient views on Malaria and Blackwater fever, the disease that
struck him down. He cites Colonial Office documents that set Freeman's African
career in perspective. The biography is enriched by a series of letters, over
many years, to Constance Freeman Briant from her uncle Richard. Volume XI also
includes a rich selection of articles from The Thorndyke File and elsewhere as
well as P.M. Stone's essay "5a King's Bench Walk," and at least one pastiche,
Donaldson's "Goodbye, Dr. Thorndyke."
Bound black cloth, folio size.
ISBN 1-55246-170-X $80.00
