The Swan River Press

	NEW TITLE: Published alongside “Carmilla” in the landmark collection In a Glass Darkly (1872), J. S. Le Fanu’s “Green Tea” was first serialised in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round in 1869. Since its first publication, Le Fanu’s tale has lost none of its potency. “Green Tea” tells of the good natured Reverend Jennings, who writes late at night on arcane topics abetted by a steady supply of green tea. Is he insane or have these nocturnal activities opened an “interior sight” that affords a route of entry for an increasingly malignant simian companion? This 150th anniversary edition of “Green Tea”, with illustrations by Alisdair Wood and an introduction by Matthew Holness, is the definitive celebration of Le Fanu’s masterpiece of psychological terror and despair. More...
	FEATURED INTRODUCTION: Many years ago, while collecting the first editions of Bram Stoker, my heart would often leap when apparently spotting his rarely encountered name in dimly lit alcoves of second-hand bookshops, only to find that I had actually misread the similar gilt lettering of “B. M. Croker”. Having no special taste for this other writer’s Indian or Irish romances, I usually disregarded them. At that time B. M. Croker was only remembered (by a shrinking number of admirers) as a once-popular bestselling novelist. Her supernatural tales had sunk into total neglect, and none had ever been revived in anthologies (not even by Hugh Lamb or Peter Haining). More...
	CURRENT ISSUE: One perennial question about genre fiction centres around the notion of “tradition”: the influence authors and their works have on the next generation, and so on down the line. In posing this question, we ask whether or not an unbroken literary pedigree can be established. For example, an excessive amount of energy has been expended exploring links, both legitimate and spurious, between Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1871/2) and Stoker’s Dracula (1897) — and believe me, this seems to be an all-consuming pastime for some. But to me, Irish genre fiction has always seemed more a web of thematic shadows, authorial echoes, even social links, rather than a series of linear connections. More...