Description

Published 1916: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition

Original green embossed decorated cloth with gilt titles on the cover and spine. 435 clean and bright slightly age-toned pages, mild speckled foxing on the endpapers and edges, slight separation showing on inner hinges could be readdressed with some glue, text block or covers not affected, previous owners name on the title page and first free page. Boards slightly rubbed and faded with time and bumped on the corners and spine ends consistent with age. A very scarce original first edition. (HQ250)

Postage €6.95 including additional books ordered.
An Post prepaid postage envelopes within the Republic of Ireland, with no weight restrictions from €6.95.

Set in Egypt, The Wave is an engrossing example of the 'weird' tale that Blackwood helped to pioneer. If your idea of the perfect horror story is more about small, spine-chilling details and big ideas, rather than a nonstop parade of grisly gore, you should explore the work of Algernon Blackwood. It is a story of a love triangle in ancient Egypt that had a tragic ending, resulting in two deaths. Now, it is England, and the protagonist is a young boy who dreams of a wave. He believes that one day that huge wave will crash down on his life destroying everything in its path. His entire life is driven by this dream, as he gets more information from it - the love triangle resurfaces, he is one of the players that has been reincarnated for a specific purpose. Will they play out their same roles, or achieve new ones?

Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".

https://www.mwbooks.ie/pages/books/292034/algernon-blackwood/the-wave-an-egyptian-aftermath

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.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "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.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2916255-the-wave