While I work on getting Oz together for Rich’s Lyra, we are working on other books!
One of them is Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, Neil Gaiman says; Lud as “one of the finest [fantasy novels] in the English language…. It is a little golden miracle of a book.” He described Mirrlees’s writing as “elegant, supple, effective and haunting: the author demands a great deal from her readers, which she repays many times over.” He says that it is one of his top ten favourite books.
Scott McKowen is the illustrator for the novel, he is creating over thirty, letterpress relief print illustrations for the book! Here he shows us his tools and work in progress of the finished piece: ‘My tools are all here — no.11 x-acto blade, an engraving burin when I need an even finer line, an old Castel-Faber technical pen with black ink (for correcting errors), magnifying lupe attached to the swing-arm of an old desk lamp (held on with jury-rigged plastic plumbing hardware), and a brush for sweeping away the insidious ink dust….’
Hope Mirrlees’ extraordinary novel doubtless deserves a fine edition. Her life partner Jane Ellen Harrison wrote ‘‘If I had been rich I should have founded a learned community for women, with vows of consecration and a beautiful rule and habit”. I have argued in my essay ‘Drugs, Sapphism and Altered States in Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist’ for a queer reading of Lud-in-the-Mist, in which the ‘mysterious drug’ fairy fruit and the altered states it induces is a metaphor for a forbidden sapphic love. Fairy fruit is so anathema to the authorities in Lud-in-the-Mist that it can only be referred to in law by the curious euphemism ‘woven silk’. A pointer to the true subject of the novel can be found in its epigram “The Sirens stand, as it would seem, to the ancient and the modern, for the impulses in life as yet immoralised, imperious longings, ecstasies, whether of love or art, or philosophy, magical voices called to a man from his ‘Land of Hearts Desire’, and to which if he hearken it may be that he will return no more – voices , too, which, whether a man sail by or stay to hearken, still sing on.” Unfortunately, in the only easily available copies, the Gollanz paperback editions (2000/2008/2018), ‘immoralised’ is incorrectly replaced with ‘immortalised’, entirely losing the intended sense. In the source of the quote, Jane Ellen Harrison’s Prolegomena, it is ‘unmoralized’, with a parallel sense to the epigram; Mirrlees may have been working from memory or simply phrased it as she wished to. An explanation for the curious euphemism ‘woven silk’ for fairy fruit, one that is congruous with it being a metaphor for sapphic love, is explained in my essay on Mirrlees novel. Take note that among the closing words of her novel Mirrlees writes ‘the Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So, let all readers of books take warning!’
Hi Alan, only just seen this, it was lost amongst the spams. Where in the book is the ‘immoralised’ incorrectly replaced with ‘immortalised’? That is really interesting. I’d like to check and which edition (with the ‘immoralised’) did you notice this came from? Thanks, marcelo
Hi Marcelo
I’ve been checking for a response to my post but had given up! Well, the wrong wording, “immortalised” instead of “immoralised”, in other words in context the epigram when correct is saying that “certain impulses in life” are “as yet immoralised”, that they are still anathema, considered immoral. I noted that when typing up my notes on this incorrect wording that spellcheck tried to correct “immoralised” (which is a word!) to “immortalised”, as it does in this response box! Well, maybe that’s what happened in the Gollanz paperback editions. The epigram is on the first few pages of the book. I can’t remember exactly how I’ve checked wording of the original edition. I probably relied on the Ballantine edition of 1972 which can only have worked from a first edition. Not sure where my copy is but I note that the Prologue Book edition in Kindle has the correct wording and attribution to Jane Harrison: “The Sirens stand, as it would seem, to the ancient and the modern, for the impulses in life as yet immoralized, imperious longings, ecstasies, whether of love or art, or philosophy, magical voices calling to a man from his “Land of Heart’s Desire,” and to which if he hearken it may be that he will return no more — voices, too, which, whether a man sail by or stay to hearken, still sing on.
Jane Harrison”. There’s a bit of a story about whether Ballantine had the rights but I think I have the evidence that in fact they did.
Thanks Alan! I’ll have a look at the text we have been given and change it. Are you on Facebook? If you are could you contact me there? I’d love to chat more, best, marcelo
Hi Marcelo
I couldn’t find my copy of the Ballantine 1970 edition of Ludi-n-the-Mist. Out of frustration I found a cheap copy on Ebay and (bonus!) got a nice copy for a tenner. The Ballantine edition was published in what became the Adult Fantasy Series, noy as naughty as it sounds but cheap paperback copies of Tolkien and other turn of the century and more modern Fantasy authors. Ballantine can only have worked from an original edition as they were the first to republish. Anyway, the wording of Mirrlees’ source in the work her life partner Jane Harrison suffices. The sapphic relationship of Mirrlees and Harrison as attested to by Virginia Woolf and the fact the book was conceived of in the milieu of ‘Paris Lesbos’ (the ex-pat ladies of the Left Bank literary community of Gertrude Stein etc) to which Mirrlees and Harrison retreated after Harrison’s retirement from Cambridge is a good starting point to consider a queer reading of Lud-in-the-Mist. My queer reading of Lud-in-the-Mist, ‘Drugs, Sapphism and Altered States in Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist’ can be found in my collected essays in ‘Bicycle Day and Other Psychedelic Essays’ published by Psychedelic Press. I’ve friended you on Facebook and can send images of the cover of the Ballantine edition and the epigraph in that edition. I had heard that Ballantine thought Mirrlees was deceased and not sought publishing rights, but I think I remember seeing an agreement in materials held by Newnham College, Cambridge.