FUNGOIDS & NEGATIONS by Enoch Soames
Two complete collections of fin de siécle poetry in one striking volume, with a new appraisal by Dr. D.S.Marriott (poet and author of ON BLACK MEN). Three volumes of Soames poetry enjoyed a singular popularity at the end of the 19th century though the third has long been considered lost. Sadly we have yet to discover either it's title or a copy. Dr. Marriott's introduction begins as a mournful tale of his as yet futile search.
Soames' contemporary reputation owes as much to his interests in the French diabolism of Paris as it does to his involvement with any literary movement. His life, staged between Parisian occultists, poets and decadents -Sâr Peladan, Hugo Vernier and Joris-Karl Huysmans- and London artists and writers -Max Beerbohm, Will Rothenstein, Aubrey Beardsley- is as fascinating as it is mysterious. The unusual circumstances of his disappearance combined with the poems unpleasant and sometimes indelicate subject matter all contributed to the works eventual loss. Dr Marriott's new addition to the select realm of Soames criticism is the first significant assessment of both the poet and his work since ENOCH SOAMES: A CRITICAL HERITAGE, edited by art historian Stephen Calloway.
COVER DESIGN - illustration from THE ART OF CYSTOMY by Adolphe Staemphli (mid 18th century), design by The Invisible Collage.
THE PALE EGYPTIAN by Owen Fitzstephan
This stunning, threatening novel of magical ancient Egypt and violent reincarnation in modern Los Angeles was originally published in the early 1920s. However, Fitzstephan was later incarcerated and judged insane following a string of unusual violent crimes involving a religious cult in his home city. The novel quickly fell into disrepute as it barely hides the authors twisted psychology behind a weird tale. "It is as if Hannibal Lecter had taken up with Lovecraft" writes Michael Paine (musician, radio personality and author of ANCIENT GREECE and THE CRUSADES), who provides a detailed background to the story itself and Fitzstephan's rise and fall. One of the many revelations here concerns another Invocations Press book and author. According to Michael, the author in attendance when Thibaut de Castries' (author of MEGAPOLISOMANCY) ashes were secretly laid to rest was not Dashiel Hammett but Fitzstephan. His homicidal dabblings with the 'Temple of the Holy Grail' in Los Angeles were inspired, at least in part, by de Castries own 'Order of the Onyx Dusk' over twenty-five years before, in the same city.
Other works by the author include THE WALL OF ASHDOD (an historical novel concerning the destruction of the Temple of Dagon from within) and EIGHTEEN INCHES (pornography). Invocations Press hopes to bring you these challenging works in the near future.
COVER DESIGN by The Invisible Collage - Since 1992 this secretive arts collective have been resolutely resisting the encroachments of modern technology; "Knife slits paper." is their battle cry.
TIME-SEARCH THROUGH THE DECLINING WEST by Jeremiah Cornelius MAHS
Only previously available in a limited print run of 200 from an obscure French press in the 1960s, 'Time-Search..' is an entertaining, confusing and, finally, deeply personal investigation of the possibilities of time-travel. Drawing heavily on the works of J.W. Dunne and Roberta Sparrow's equally challenging THE PHILOSOPHY OF TIME TRAVEL [Franklin Harris, New York, 1944; forthcoming from Invocations Press] Cornelius from the outset takes movement through time as a given, sidestepping many thorny and, to the author, fruitless debates. Instead he creates an intriguing network of possibilities, all no doubt informed by his much publicised experiments with sensory deprivation and drugs, that transport the reader into a rich and surprisingly powerful world of endless options and inconstancy. Jeremiah Cornelius was also the author of THE ETHICAL SIMULATION, considered by many as an unacknowledged predecessor to the work of philosopher Jean Baudrillard and TOWARD THE ULTIMATE PARADOX, a work considered unpalatable and unpublishable to this day. Even by us.
Invocations Press wishes to thanks the author's son, Jerry, for his assistance in tracing valuable manuscript copies of his father's works. Radek Chodera, our agent in Prague, expertly negotiated their release.
COVER DESIGN by photographer Adam Curtis. The Machinery of the Beach is from a private collection and can only be seen on the third Sunday of every month at the author's Brighton home. Every other day it looks like something else.
MEGAPOLISOMANCY: THE NEW SCIENCE OF CITIES by Thibaut de Castries
Thibaut de Castries arrived in Los Angeles in 1900 with copies of his visionary book already printed but unbound in his meagre luggage. His origins and the fragments of his later life available to us fail to form any coherent picture. Instead we have a stream of implausible tales; panthers, balloon trips, Egypt and dusky, beautiful paramours. All these could only be gaudy misdirection for equally dubious affairs. It is certain that he mixed with those local, contemporary and famous; Jack London, George Sterling, Nora Mae French, Earl Rogers, even Ambrose Bierce. He also established, as many did in those years of occult experimentation, the Order of the Onyx Dusk, whether as a serious venture or another invented front is difficult to determine. What is certain is that he turned against his single magnum opus in later years, seeking out and destroying by fire all the copies he could find (a not uncommon trait or method in many Invocations Press authors).
MEGAPOLISOMANCY is a solemn and serious warning against the proliferation and intensity of urban living, railing freely against compacted volumes of steel and paper, the "vast congeries of gigantic fuming vats" that the author saw as defining those new growing urban expanses. Finally, the book tips over into more spiritual or occult concerns as de Castries theorises the arrival of 'paramentals', a modern elemental arising from such a widespread change in the human condition.
Rosemary Park, editor of this first 21st century edition (author of ANOTHER LONDON, INSIDE OUT and of the forthcoming sixth edition of John Drinkwater's THE ARCHITECTURE OF COUNTRY HOUSES from Invocations Press) makes strong claims in her learned introduction: "de Castries is undeniably a lost prophet of the modern age, a psycho-geographer before they had a name (such as Iain Sinclair)...MEGAPOLISOMANCY has more significance, is more relevant perhaps, than its fabulous author with his frankly unsavoury claims to be responsible in some dastardly occult manner for the Great Quake of 1906." This sizeable volume, now with annotated maps and building designs included by Rosemary Park to further prove the continuing accuracy of de Castries unrecognised prognoses, is an absorbing addition to the ever growing catalogue of works on the secret designs behind the emerging modern age - and the dangerous psycho-spiritual possibilities inherent in our own living space. "Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold." as has been pointed out more than once.
[New information concerning the final fate of de Castries is revealed in Michael Paine's introductory essay to Owen Fitzstephan's Los Angeles novel THE PALE EGYPTIAN, also published by Invocations Press.]
SPECIAL OFFER - The first one hundred copies of this heavily illustrated, deluxe edition of MEGAPOLISOMANCY will include a fully annotated facsimile of a rare and unusual 18th century manuscript. Discovered by Rosemary Park and Christopher North in the archives of an asylum some distance from London, this illustrated paper elucidates a rigorous and thorough project to rebuild the then recently destroyed London Bridge using stones from Stonehenge. A wild and bold project indeed, even before the establishment of the English Heritage Commission.
COVER DESIGN - Photography by the Prague-based photographer, Jonàs Tupík, who is also providing a series of images of hidden London for Rosemary Park's next project A LONDON WALK by Reverend Thomas Hampole.
THE GOD OF THE LABYRINTH by Herbert Quain
In the recursive history of post-modern fiction, Herbert Quain is unjustly overlooked. Only Jorge Luis Borges, ever the erudite connoisseur, appears to have recognised this submerged genius. His small ouevre (The God of the Labyrinth, 1933, April March, 1936, The Secret Mirror, drama, and Statements, eight short stories, 1939) contains much that is instantly recognisable as the theoretical styling and formal structure that have won great fame for later writers. His ideas can now be seen in everything from The Usual Suspects and James Ellroy to Italo Calvino and M.Night Shyamalan. The God of the Labyrinth (not to be confused with Colin Wilson's later novel of the same name) is a stately tale of murder and detection that, in closing, needs to be reassessed (and indeed re-read) in the light of a subtle twist that overturns all previous assumptions.
Christopher North is hoping to bring back into print all of Quain's works and is writing and researching the first critical biography of the author.
Invocations Press would like to thank the daughter of 'Miss X' who wishes to remain anonymous in order to avoid the blaze of publicity that will undoubtedly follow the republication of this work. Left in the hands of her mother by the writer Jorge Luis Borges, who, to his annoyance but our delight, failed to return his copy to him, she has allowed us, in the absence of an original manuscript, to prepare a facsimile edition of this, one of the few extant copies of the original book.
COVER DESIGN - adapted from the original 1933 edition, by an unnamed designer .
LOST HOURS: THREE FORGOTTEN BRITISH POETS - Richard Pelham, William Ashbless & 'Orlando'
With a new introductory essay by the editor of our Poetry line, Karen Eliot, this collection serves to illustrate the wonders lost by the canonical strait-jacket of historical literary criticism. Reprinting for the first time in almost two centuries a selection from the lost Romantic, William Ashbless (author of The Twelve Hours from 1811 and subject of The Life of William Ashbless by James Bailey) and for the first time since the long out of print Collected Poems (Clarendon 1912), work by Richard Pelham from the 18th century (author of Psalms of Solace and Silent Endearments), Eliot illustrates how such forgotten gems can call into question and finally reshape our understanding of the apparently traditional development of poetry. Her in-depth critical reconstruction of Pelham's last fragmentary and unpublished work, The Instruments of Passion, in the 'Structures of Madness' chapter, is a tour-de-force of poetic trompe l'oeil. This excellent academic contribution to the field is further reinforced by the final section of Lost Hours: a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript of the Burdett-Coutts Award winning poem The Oak Tree, by 'Orlando', complete with blood stains. Recovered in remarkable condition from a field where it had been buried between the wars, the poem is presented without comment by the editor as it stands alone as a clear example of transhistorical genius, unappreciated since it's initial success. By 1928 this little square book, first editions of which were signed by the author and bound in red cloth, had been through seven editions. All are now astonishingly rare. Karen Eliot is working on a further collection of 'Orlando's classical dramatic pieces, The Death of Ajax and Other Plays, working in the main from recently rediscovered copies published in the late 16th century (John Ball, of the 'Feathers & Coronet', opposite St. Paul's Cross, Cheapside, London).
COVER DESIGN by Christopher North, detail from a photograph of the area in which the manuscript of The Oak Tree was first recovered.
BEASTS BEYOND TOLERANCE OR UNDERSTANDING [TWORSTWO ZA HRANICI WYDRZE NASI A POROZUMENI NASEHO] by Maximilian Hrib z Kozohradu
First published in 1590, this extremely rare pamphlet describes the mysterious underground chambers that were discovered in Prague in 1587 during the construction of the Emperor Rudolf II's water tunnel, and the reasons for their subsequent closure. No copies are known to survive of the first edition, but we are fortunate to have one extant copy of the second revised edition of 1607, published in Novae Domae (now Jindrichuv Hradec in South Bohemia). This is the first reissue since that date, including a facsimile of the original Czech text, plus parallel translations, indices, appendices on the later history of the beasts and a location map. Four plates documenting the state of Rudolf's tunnel after the great flood of 2002 are included in the appendices.
Little is known of the author, though it is commonly assumed that Maxmilian Hrib
is a pseudonym. (The name could be broadly translated into English as "Max
Mushroom of Goatcastle" or "Max Mushroom of Nippleborough", depending on which
interpretation is preferred.) Some historians have hypothesised that the author
may have been a minor relative of the Habsburgs on the distaff side, but there
seems little evidence for this except his choice of name (Maximilian was common
among members of the ruling dynasty, viz the later Emperor of Mexico). It seems
altogether more likely that, as suggested by Prof. Bedrich Hroznys of the Czech
Academy of Sciences, he may have been one of the alchemists working for the
Emperor Rudolf in Golden Lane, though modern scholarship has cast doubt on the
popular tradition that he was moved to adopt a pseudonym in order to disguise
his Jewish ethnicity, or that he was same Ahasuerus later made famous by Eugene
Sue.
Nothing is known of how the second edition came to be published in Novae Domae.
Although this small and unusually beautiful city was a significant centre of
ecclesiastical publishing in the early Seventeenth Century, the majority of its
population at the time was German (the Latin name is in fact a literal
translation of the town's German name, Neuhaus), so the fact that the book was
published in Czech is something of a curiosity. Indeed, the text shows clear
signs of German influence, for example in the substitution of the German "w" for
the Czech "v".
The Invocations Press edition has been carefully prepared by Prague writer and translator Cyril Simsa, with technical advice by Prof. Hroznys. We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Department of Cryptozoology at Wenceslas II Technical University in Olomouc in compiling the appendices.
COVER DESIGN - A painting depicting
"creatures of the otherworld" by an unknown psychic medium (c. 1920) from the the "occult menagerie" of one Simon Orne, apocryphally, the inheritor
of some of Rudolf's esoteric Beasts; from the collection of Bedrich Hroznys.