The Garden of Survival Algernon Blackwood – A narrative told in the first person in the way of a letter from Richard to his twin brother. This book is not only about the wondrous tales of his life, career and travels, but moreover of the finding in a personal and conscience way the true meaning of beauty and of love. The solution of this problem of unrequited loved lay at last within her grasp; of a love that only asked to give of its unquenched and unquenchable store, undismayed by the total absence of response. As Blackwood writes this story with his well-known articulation for all things beautiful and even grotesque, he adds a plot twist that is gut wrenching; which afterward you cannot stop reading until the endif only to be certain.Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English writer of tales of the supernatural. In his late thirties, Blackwood started to write horror stories. He was very successful, writing ten books of short stories and appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature, and many of his stories reflect this. Although 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 (1911), which climaxes with a traveller’s sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius Le Vallon (1916) and its sequel The Bright Messenger (1921), which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution in human consciousness. His best stories, such as those collected in the book Incredible Adventures (1914), are masterpieces of atmosphere, construction and suggestion.
About the author
Blackwood was born in Shooter’s Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and 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, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, and, throughout his adult life, 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 very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. 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.English writer of ghost stories and supernatural fiction, of whom Lovecraft wrote: ‘He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere.’ His powerful story ‘The Willows, ‘ which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only ‘foremost of all’ Blackwood’s tales but the best ‘weird tale’ of all time. (Unfortunately, Blackwood, who was familiar with Lovecraft’s work, failed to return the compliment. As he told Peter Penzoldt, he found ‘spiritual terror’ missing in his young admirer’s writing, something he considered all-important in his own.)Among his thirty-odd books, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels published as John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (1908), which featured a ‘psychic detective’ who combined the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and a psychic medium. Blackwood also wrote light fantasy and juvenile books.The son of a preacher, Blackwood had a life-long interest in the supernatural, the occult, and spiritualism, and firmly believed that humans possess latent psychic powers. The autobiography Episodes Before Thirty (1923) tells of his lean years as a journalist in New York. In the late 1940s, Blackwood had a television program on the BBC on which he read . . . ghost stories!
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