A Gentle Madness: A Book of Discoveries

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Tuesday

Acquisitions (86): John Masefield

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

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William Strang: John Masefield (1909)

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)
[Abebooks.co.uk: Your Book Soon, Coronation Rd, Stroud, UK - 31/1/2023]:

John Masefield. A Book of Discoveries. Illustrated by Gordon Browne. London: Wells, Gardner Darton & Co., 1910.

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

John Masefield's Fiction

British Poet Laureate John Masefield published 23 novels and two collections of short stories between 1905 and 1947: not an inconsiderable total - yet he's still far better known as a poet ('Sea-Fever', "Cargoes', The Everlasting Mercy, and many others).

I was brought up on his children's fantasy books, such as The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and later developed a taste for such bizarre, offbeat adventure stories as Sard Harker and Dead Ned. It was natural enough, then, that I should choose the novels of John Masefield as the topic from my Masters thesis at Auckland University in the early 1980s.

As it turned out, the task was far beyond me. I ended up narrowing my coverage to his first seven novels, written between 1908 and 1911, a distinct group of works with a somewhat different focus from those that came later, from 1923 onwards. You can (if you wish) consult the final results here.

Strangely enough, despite all these years of interest in him, until recently I owned copies of only 22 of his 23 novels. The last, and possibly most obscure of them, A Book of Discoveries (1910) has eluded me until now. I have read it, mind you: but only in a rather faded photocopy. It occurred one day to me that it might be available online, and so it proved - at a pretty reasonable price, too.

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

What can one say of it? It's a bit like the Boy-Scout Manual in form: an account of two young boys who are being instructed in woodcraft and boating by a somewhat reclusive Kipingesque man-of-infinite-resource-and-sagacity who lives nearby. There's a distinct tone of authoritarianism behind many of their coaching sessions, but the illustrations are delightful and it's certainly very much of its time. You can read more about it in my thesis here, if you're curious.

The idea of this post is to celebrate the acquisition of this last item in my collection of Masefield's prose fiction with a brief breakdown, title by title, of all 25 of his novels and short-story collections. The internet had not been born or thought of when I first began to write about him, but I'm glad to be able to link to and illustrate them in such a convenient and user-friendly way now:

Short Stories:

A Mainsail Haul (1905)

A Tarpaulin Muster (1907)

Early Novels:

Captain Margaret (1908)

Multitude and Solitude (1909)

Martin Hyde (1910)

A Book of Discoveries (1910)

Lost Endeavour (1910)

The Street of To-Day (1911)

Jim Davis (1911)

Novella:

The Taking of Helen (1923)

Later Novels:

Sard Harker (1924)

ODTAA (1926)

The Midnight Folk (1927)

The Hawbucks (1929)

The Bird of Dawning (1933)

The Taking of the Gry (1934)

The Box of Delights (1935)

Victorious Troy (1935)

Eggs and Baker (1936)

The Square Peg (1937)

Dead Ned (1938)

Live and Kicking Ned (1939)

Basilissa (1940)

Conquer (1941)

Badon Parchments (1947)

Secondary:

Bibliography

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

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John Masefield: A Mainsail Haul (1905)

A Mainsail Haul
[London: Elkin Mathews, June 1, 1905]

Where better to start my coverage of Masefield's fiction than with this, his first collection of short stories? Somewhat surprisingly, it's been reprinted many times, perhaps because it accords better with his image as a salt-water balladeer than much of his other work in the genre.

The folk tales, such as "The Seal Man" (added in the second, 1913 edition), are probably the strongest items here.

John Masefield: A Mainsail Haul (1913)

Contents:

Don Alfonso's Treasure Hunt

Port of Many Ships

Sea Superstition

A Sailor's Yarn

The Yarn of Lanky Job

From the Spanish

[The Seal Man - added in 1913 edition]

[The Western Islands - added in 1913 edition]

[Captain John Ward - added in 1913 edition]

[Captain John Jennings - added in 1913 edition]

[The Voyage of the Cygnet - added in 1913 edition]

[Captain Robert Knox - added in 1913 edition]

[Captain John Coxon - revised in 1913 edition]

[In a Castle Ruin - added in 1913 edition]

A Deal of Cards

The Devil and the Old Man

NOTE

Nearly all these stories and one of the historical papers first appeared in the Manchester Guardian; one tale is reprinted from the Nation and one from the Pall Mall Magazine. The four remaining historical papers are reprinted from the Gentleman's Magazine.
I thank the Editors and Proprietors of all these periodicals for permission to include the papers in this volume.

- J. M.

Jack Yeats: Frontispiece for A Mainsail Haul (1905)

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John Masefield: A Tarpaulin Muster (1919)

A Tarpaulin Muster
[London: E. Grant Richards, April 11, 1907]

A Tarpaulin Muster is, in my view, a much more interesting collection than A Mainsail Haul. As I said of it when I was writing my Master's thesis in 1985:

The stories are now no longer generalized seaman's yarns, but tales written from his own experience (just as the lyrics of Ballads [1903] had begun to speak in the poet's own voice, rather than in the sailors' argot of Salt-Water Ballads [1902]). They begin with phrases like: 'When I was working in a New York saloon I saw something of the city police' ... or 'Ten years ago I was "in the half-deck" of a four-masted barque'.

It therefore seems a little surprising that it's been reprinted far less often than its predecessor. Perhaps it's because publishers have generally preferred to package Masefield as an 'old salt' rather than the more complex and self-conscious writer he would eventually become.

John Masefield: A Tarpaulin Muster (1907)

Contents:

Edward Herries

A White Night

Big Jim

El Dorado

The Pirates of Santa Anna

Davy Jones's Gift

Ghosts

Ambitious Jimmy Hicks

Anty Bligh

On Growing Old

A Memory

On the Palisades

The Rest-house on the Hill

Gentle People

Some Irish Fairies

The Cape Horn Calm

A Port Royal Twister

In a Fo'c'sle

The Bottom of the Well

Being Ashore

One Sunday

A Raines Law Arrest

The Schooner-man's Close Calls

The Yarn of Happy Jack

John Masefield: A Tarpaulin Muster (1907)

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John Masefield: Captain Margaret (1908)

Captain Margaret: A Romance
[London: Grant Richards, June 17, 1908]

I probably can't do much better than to quote here from the chapter of my thesis about Captain Margaret:

Masefield ... does anything but the unexpected in his choice of subject and period for this, his first novel. His early articles and poems had been about the sea, which gave him an obvious precedent. The sea implies a voyage – which, in its turn, requires three things: a crew, a ship, and a destination. The destination was natural – the Caribbean coast of South America – an area which fascinated Masefield throughout his life (and whose background he knew well from having written about it in On the Spanish Main two years earlier). In order to include the buccaneers and other picturesque denizens of the coast, the era would have to be the sixteenth or seventeenth century. And, in fact, his period is the reign of James II, 1685-88.

It's not my favourite of my novels. In it he attempts to portray a complex love triangle between the somewhat over-sensitive Captain of the title, the bully Tom Stukeley, and the latter's long-suffering wife Olivia.

The effort is perhaps overly ambitious for an initial foray into novel-writing, and it does have the effect of obscuring the real strengths of his fiction: the portrayal of action and creation of atmosphere. It's certainly not a negigible or simplistic work by any means, however.

Captain Margaret (1974)

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John Masefield: Multitude and Solitude (1909)

Multitude and Solitude
[London: Grant Richard, June 29, 1909]

Here's another quote from my thesis, quite a long one this time:

The one great failing in Masefield's novels is their lack of what might be called "significant structure". As we have seen above, he was perfectly competent in the various major branches of the novelist's art – narrative excitement, dialogue, description – but he lacked the ability ... to link all these elements together, and subordinate them to an overarching design. ...
Nevertheless, like most writers, Masefield was well aware of his own principal failings, and was quite ingenious in avoiding them. His usual expedients in his later novels were either to employ first-person narration (as in Dead Ned and its sequel Live and Kicking Ned (1938 & 1939)), which supplies a sort of natural structuring device – the exigencies of memory – in itself; or to concentrate on the fortunes of a single hero or protagonist almost to the exclusion of all else: Sard Harker (1924), Odtaa (1925), Basilissa (1940). Another successful variation on this device was to devote a whole book to the reactions of his hero to a single crisis, lasting a few hours or days: The Bird of Dawning (1933), Victorious Troy (1935). This latter book, which deals with a ship struck by a hurricane, is rather reminiscent of Conrad's Typhoon (1903), or, more particularly – presumably as an analogue rather than an antecedent – of Richard Hughes' In Hazard (1938).
In the present novel, Multitude and Solitude, Masefield does not so much resolve his problems by embodying them in the form of fiction, as create a principal character to argue about them, and test out the various proposed solutions to them "in the field". It is no accident that Roger's obsession with sleeping sickness parallels the young Masefield's desire to become a doctor in order to fight yellow fever:

To be a doctor and to work at yellow fever, that hope shone like a star. I had been brought up in a generation which had suffered much from yellow fever. De Lesseps' Canal scheme had been wrecked by it. Cape Horn was still made necessary by it. I had known many sailors who had seen it at close quarters, and had shuddered at its deadliness and mystery. I had had a friend suddenly killed by it. I longed to work at that enemy, and to help to find 'its unseen, small, but million-murdering cause'.

The book certainly livens up considerably after its hero decides to go off and fight this tropical disease in the field. It's a bit of a long slog to get there, admittedly, but Masefield is always at his best when portraying a single intense action, as I've tried to explain above.

John Masefield: Multitude and Solitude (1909)

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John Masefield: Martin Hyde (1910)

Martin Hyde: The Duke's Messenger
[London: Wells, Gardner, Darton and Co. Ltd., October 28, 1910]

RLS was a good natural sailor: but I am much puzzled by the Hispaniola – a schooner, 1750 or so, with a mizen mast. He meant her to be a schooner: the film people wronged him; but he did not allow for the smallness. Life in a schooner is more public than a town pump: & a word spoken aboard must be heard by somebody.

- Quoted in The Early Novels of John Masefield: 1908-1911 (University of Auckland, 1985)

One of Masefield's great advantages as a writer of adventure stories was that - unlike Robert Louis Stevenson - he actually knew a lot about the sea, and had indeed himself sailed before the mast. He may have lacked the extensive professional experience of a Joseph Conrad, but his ambitions as a writer were very different.

In this, his first boy's book, he begins to explore that terrain for the first time:

Martin Hyde is ... a most amusing adventure story – but Masefield has done his best to make it something more than that as well. Since the story consists entirely of the reactions and observations of one character, Masefield has attempted to suggest a rather complex melange of motives in his hero.
Martin is, on the one hand, a fairly robust and resilient boy, always ready for adventure and excitement – almost in the best traditions of the "brave English boy" of the nineteenth century boys' book: 'I felt that even if I died, even if I was shot there, as I sailed along with my King's orders, I should have tasted life in that wild gallop' ...; 'I was excited; but I remember that I enjoyed it. I felt so like an ancient Briton lying in wait for his enemy' ... Perhaps best of all: 'I felt my heart leap at the thought of being in another adventure with the lady' ... On leaving for Holland, he exults:

We were off. I was on my way to Holland. I was a conspirator travelling with a King. There ahead of me was the fine hull of the schooner la Reina, waiting to carry us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I thought, beyond, in the great world.

It is, in short, the first of his 'rattling good yarns': in the tradition of Ballantyne, Henty - and Stevenson himself.

John Masefield: Martin Hyde (1965)

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John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

A Book of Discoveries
[London: Wells, Gardner, Darton and Co. Ltd., October 10, 1910]

Jack Ross, The Early Novels of John Masefield: 1908-1911 (University of Auckland, 1985):

In his next novel, A Book of Discoveries, Masefield abandoned the somewhat restrictive format of the traditional boys' adventure story for a narrative set in the present day – in the heart of England – and without the traditional appurtenances of romance (pirates, smugglers, or international spies). There is not even a heroine – or even a prominent female character. Indeed, one could perhaps best describe the book as a fictionalized series of lectures – on history, the wonders of nature, archaeology, ship-building, and all the other 'discoveries' that surround us:
'They may say what they like about discovery,' he added, 'but the wonderful discoveries lie under our noses all the time, if we only had the sense to make them.'
It is a little difficult to give a plot-summary, since there is, in fact, little plot to summarize; so little that most of Masefield's bibliographers have failed to notice that it is a novel, and have classified it instead under 'Miscellaneous Prose'. However, the story tells of two young boys, Mac and Robin Shenstone, who go exploring one day onto the nearby estate of Mr. Hampden – an almost mythically wild piece of "unspoiled England". Hampden finds them there, but instead of scolding them for trespassing invites them to tea and shows them his collection of model boats; all the while talking to them in a manner half ferocious, half jocular:
'You' – here he turned to Robin – 'what's your name? Robin? – Robbin' Hen-roosts, or Robbin' Birds'-nests, or Robbin' Mail-bags? What! None of them? Plain Robin Red-breast? Well! Be off with you, and get some dry sticks.'
They come back next day, at his invitation, and he shows them a coracle and a dugout, and teaches them how to use them. Mr. Hampden keeps up a constant flood of information about aborigines, evolution, flint axes, and ancient Britons – and concludes with a potted history of trade in the Mediterranean (from Jonah to the Phoenicians to 'Pharaoh Neco').

It's perhaps worth adding that:

Masefield's first three children's books were published within two months of each other, between October 8th and November 25th, 1910. No doubt he had been working on them all for a year or so beforehand (his last novel, Multitude and Solitude, had appeared in June 1909, and since then he had published only four plays, a speech, and a book of poems); but, as they are all between 80,000 and 90,000 words, this still represents no mean feat of composition.

Any hastiness in the composition of A Book of Discoveries is therefore understandable. Actually, it stands up very well after all these years. It's clearly modelled on such bildungsromane as Richard Jefferies' Bevis (1881) or S. R. Crockett's Toady Lion (1895), and is certainly an important contribution to the genre.

John Masefield: A Book of Discoveries (1910)

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John Masefield: Lost Endeavour (1910)

Lost Endeavour
[London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, November 25, 1910]

This is my favourite among all of Masefield's early novels. As I said of it in 1985:

Lost Endeavour is ... almost a Treasure Island as Masefield felt it ought to be. The parallels are very close – even down to the actual treasure on an island – but Masefield is concerned to show what such a life might actually have been like to experience. None of his villains are likeable – unlike 'Long John Silver' – and his pirates in particular are brutal ruffians and animals. Nor is the inn where the story starts at all like the 'Admiral Benbow'; but is, instead:
one of those squalid dens 'where sot meets sot in beery beastliness.' A drunkard inside somewhere was talking to the pot-boy about a main of cocks, in which one called Jouncer had killed the other.
It is characteristic of Masefield that this overheard snatch of conversation should not be about a treasure-map, or some other matter which will prove to be of vital concern a little later in the story; but instead a drunken, half-incomprehensible monologue about something of little interest to the speaker and even less to his hearers. Atmosphere is everything in Masefield's novel – and he had an unrivalled talent for conveying a feeling of futile, mindless nastiness in squalid surroundings. A thousand touches go to make it up – small, exactly-observed details: 'that smell of candle-grease and hot metal which a lantern gives out when it has burnt for a long time' (p.30); or scraps of speech, reported with imaginative precision:
'Guzzling 'og,' said the old crone. 'Nor I won't wait.'

'You drink like Sunday Jack, who broke the brewer'
There is, of course, such a thing as being too harrowing - especially for a boys' book; but Masefield allowed for that, too. Masefield's revision of Treasure Island is operating on two levels: one in the direction of greater realism and verisimilitude – Charles Harding's story; and the other attempting to provide a model for greater vividness and corporality in children's fantasy – Little Theo's story. Masefield's jungle is not simply cribbed from a boys' encyclopedia and dressed up with alligators and parrots; instead it is:
All a wilderness of green things, a chaos of vegetables. No, it is not a chaos, it is a world of the most exquisite order. Every leaf is turned so as to catch life from its surroundings; the greatest and sweetest and fittest kind of life, either of sun or air or water. Not a blossom, not a twig, not a fruit there but has striven, I will not say with its whole intellect, but with its whole nature, to make of itself the utmost possible, and to give to itself in its brief life a deeper crimson, a more tense, elastic toughness, a finer sweetness and odour. Ah! the life that goes on there, the abundant torrent of life, the struggle for beauty and delicacy. Tell me of your cities. I tell you of the garden and the orchard, where life is not a struggle for wealth, but for nobleness of form and colour. Ah! that forest. It was cool within there, out of the sun, so cool that it was like walking in a well; a dim, cool, beautiful well, full of pale green water from the sea. The flowers called to me: 'I am crimson,' 'I am like a pearl,' 'I am like sapphires.' The fruits called to me that they tasted like great magical moons.

You like it or you don't. It is, I suppose, a somewhat futile book, in that - unlike in Stevenson's prototype - our heroes do not succeed in obtaining the promised treasure, but it certainly illustrates Masefield's life-long belief that "the meaning shows in the defeated thing."

John Masefield: Lost Endeavour (1910)

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John Masefield: The Street of To-Day (1911)

The Street of To-Day
[London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., March 22, 1911]

Jack Ross, The Early Novels of John Masefield: 1908-1911 (University of Auckland, 1985):

The first impression that anyone might gain of The Street of To-Day is that it is a tissue of epigrams – and one must admit that in this it is simply accentuating the habitual usage of Multitude and Solitude. This was, of course, a convention of the period; but, although he applies himself manfully, I think it would be fair to say that Masefield was never very much at home in the "demesne" of Oscar Wilde. Almost every page, for long tracts at a time, is covered with remarks such as: 'Women aren't a sex. They're a free-masonry' ... or:
'Perhaps art bores you, though. Does it?'
'Not at all,' said Lionel. 'It interests me. Especially modern art. I look on it as a morbid state, due to the turning inward of the healthy activities. It's an hallucination, Miss Derrick, caused by life in towns.'
One suspects, therefore, that much of the atmosphere of "intellectuality" which surrounds the book is due to the style, rather than any real complexity of thought.

It's a direct sequel to Multitude and Solitude, and continues the adventures of one of the two protagonists of that novel, and his efforts to reform society in a rather proto-fascistic manner. It also contains a number of reflections on such contemporary issues as women's suffrage and universal education.

It is, in short, a bit of a mess, but not an uninteresting one. It does lack the exotic appeal of Masefield's more successful fictions, however.

John Masefield: The Street of To-Day (1911)

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John Masefield: Jim Davis (1911)

Jim Davis
[London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd., October 4, 1911]

Jack Ross, The Early Novels of John Masefield: 1908-1911 (University of Auckland, 1985):

Jim Davis, John Masefield's fourth book for boys, was published in October 1911, a little apart from the rest of the group. It was the last of his pre-war novels, and the fact that it actually appeared after The Everlasting Mercy – Masefield's phenomenally successful long narrative poem, which first showed 'what I could do' – suggests a reason why he might have lost interest in it half-way through. This would explain a certain perfunctoriness about the ending (everyone's destiny is polished off in a paragraph); and the fact that it is only two-thirds the length of the other boys' books.
Once again, it is a traditional boys' book in form – told in the first person by the eponymous hero – and the action unfolds in an early nineteenth century Devonshire village. Predictably enough, given this setting, it is a story about smugglers.

It seems a little surprising that it's been so often reprinted, given its rather perfunctory denouement, but there's no accounting for tastes, and smugglers do seem to be perennially popular with readers.

John Masefield: Jim Davis (1920)

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John Masefield: The Taking of Helen (1923)

The Taking of Helen
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., June 12, 1923]

C. S. Lewis commented in one of his critical books that he found the Old French convention of writing stories in combined verse and prose a very pleasing one, which would be well worth reviving by someone such as the "present Poet Laureate". As it happens, that is precisely what Masefield did in this version of the origins of the Trojan war, which takes a characteristically romantic view of the love affair between Helen and Paris.

It appeared, first, as a stand-alone work in a limited edition, then, the next year, as part of a collection of miscellaneous prose pieces called Recent Prose in the UK, and The Taking of Helen and Other Pieces in New York.

It is, however, probably of less significance in itself than in heralding a new fascination with prose fiction on the part of Masefield, best known up to this point for his lyrics and his long verse narratives.

John Masefield: The Taking of Helen (1923)

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John Masefield: Sard Harker (1924)

Sard Harker
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 9, 1924]

Sard Harker ... is the first of three novels by Masefield set in the fictional nation of Santa Barbara in South America. The others are ODTAA and The Taking of the Gry.
The novel begins with establishing narrative describing the fictional Santa Barbara as being geographically situated "far to leeward, with a coast facing to the north and east". Masefield moves on to describe the background of the protagonist, Chisholm Harker, called "Sard" Harker because he is "sardonic". He is the son of Chisholm Harker, Rector of Windlesham in Berkshire. The Rector died when Sard was 13 years old. Sard's mother remarried after having been widowed for two years, causing an estrangement that encourages Sard to go to sea.
The story opens in February 1897. Sard Harker is mate on a merchant vessel, the Pathfinder, under the command of Captain Carey, and is probably aged around 30. The ship is in the fictional port of Las Palomas. Ten years previously, on 18 March 1887, Sard was serving on another ship, the Venturer, in exactly the same harbour when he had a strange dream that he would meet a girl on the second of three visits to a white house called Los Xicales.
On the Pathfinder’s final day in Las Palomas Captain Carey and Sard Harker watch a boxing match. During the match Sard overhears talk between two other spectators that suggests that a Mr Hilary Kingsborough and his sister will come to some harm. After the boxing match Sard goes off to warn the Kingsboroughs. By coincidence they are renting Los Xicales. The Kingsboroughs do not heed the warning and Sard leaves wondering if he has seen the girl his dream warned him about.
Unfortunately Sard has little more than minutes to keep his passage on the Pathfinder. The adventure commences proper when Sard takes a wrong turning into a swamp and then sustains a stingray injury. He has by this time missed his passage and resolves to make his way to Santa Barbara. His endeavours result in his being assaulted and mugged, and put onto a freight train that takes him far inland. A long section of the novel is concerned with his ever more arduous journey across Santa Barbara, with minor characters and natural hazards endangering his life. Supernatural or starvation-induced hallucinations also feature on three occasions.
Sard is ultimately successful in reaching Santa Barbara, where he learns the fate of the Pathfinder.
The novel concludes with a confrontation with Sagrado B, a practitioner of black magic who wants Miss Kingsborough to complete one of his satanic rituals.

- Wikipedia: Sard Harker

Well, yes, that does give the essential facts about John Masefield's very odd novel. I wrote about it at some length in chapter 6 of my PhD thesis An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day (University of Edinburgh, 1990), where I contrasted it with other 'quest' narratives about journeys through the South American interior.

I described his intention in writing it there as follows:

it is his intention to portray for us – as accurately as he can – the particular range of human sensations associated by him with South America: in this case, illness, the futility of life in such surroundings, and the inexplicable horror of certain sights (rats, fragments of ancient carving, a sign marked ‘Tlotoatin’). It is not a comforting perspective on South America – or on existence – which is why Masefield is careful (in the novel) to put it in the context of Sard’s finally successful journey.
It is, in fact, a nightmarish view (it is no accident that the ‘logic of dreams’ governs Sard’s progress not only in a metaphorical sense, but in a structural one – the whole quest is heralded by a prophetic dream, and visions and prophecies guide him throughout), and it seems not too strained a conjecture to suggest that it had its origins in his initial associations with the area: as a boy of sixteen, ill with sunstroke and a nervous breakdown, at what seemed an absolute impasse in his life.

John Masefield: Sard Harker (1924)

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John Masefield: ODTAA (1926)

ODTAA
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., March 25, 1926]

ODTAA (1926) by John Masefield is an adventure novel ... The letters in its title stand for "One Damn Thing After Another". It opens with establishing narrative describing the fictional nation of Santa Barbara, which "lies far to leeward of the Sugar States, is at the angle of the continent [of South America], with two coasts, one facing to the north, the other east. The city of Santa Barbara is in a bay at the angle where these two coasts trend one from each other."
The novel is set prior to the events described in Masefield's earlier novel Sard Harker.

- Wikipedia: ODTAA

It's hard to exaggerate the degree to which ODTAA is a reprise of Sard Harker: there's the same frustrating set of obstacles in the way of the protagonist, the same sense of a malign providence deliberately putting difficulties in his way ... The main difference lies in its far less optimistic ending. The saintly Carlotta de Leyva is not saved by the protagonist, Highworth Ridden ('Hi', for short), and , as readers of Sard Harker will already know, the 1887 rebellion, led by Don Miguel de Encinitas, against the tyrannical Don Lopez de Meruel, Dictator of Santa Barbara, is doomed to defeat. Once again, it exemplifies Masefield's longheld conviction that:

Life's battle is a conquest for the strong;
The meaning shows in the defeated thing

John Masefield: ODTAA (1926)

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John Masefield: The Midnight Folk (1927)

The Midnight Folk
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., November 10, 1927]

The Midnight Folk is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield first published in 1927. It is about a boy, Kay Harker, who sets out to discover what became of a fortune stolen from his seafaring great grandfather Aston Tirrold Harker (in reality, Aston Tirrold is a village in Oxfordshire). The treasure is also sought by a coven of witches who are seeking it for their own ends. Kay's governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer is a member of the coven. The witches are led or guided by the wizard Abner Brown.
Kay Harker is aided in his quest by various talking animals, most notably Nibbins the cat, who used to be a witch's cat but has reformed. There are two other household cats: the main antagonist is Blackmalkin, and he is aided by the mysterious Greymalkin who takes his name from the witch's familiar in the opening scene of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Kay Harker has various adventures — sailing on the high seas, swimming with mermaids, flying on broomsticks. At one point in the novel he manages to see into the past. Many maternal characters appear in the book; one takes Kay on a nocturnal ride on a magical horse. She then reappears at the end of the book as Caroline Louisa, Kay's new guardian. She tells Kay, "... I loved your mother ...". It is possible that she represents Masefield's memory of his own mother who died when he was very young.
... The Midnight Folk is written as one piece. There are no chapter divisions. Division within the text is obtained by moving from prose to verse or even song in some places.

- Wikipedia: The Midnight Folk

This was the first of Masefield's novels I read - as a young boy - and it retains an inexplicable charm for me. I can understand that less partial readers might find its jumble of unexplained references, disjointed episodes, and dream-like transitions hard to follow, or just downright irritating, but for me they all combine harmoniously into an Alice in Wonderland-like perfection.

John Masefield: The Midnight Folk (1927)

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John Masefield: The Hawbucks (1929)

The Hawbucks
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 29, 1929]

As one online reviewer puts it:

Romance set in the English countryside. Six or seven young bachelors compete for the hand of a beautiful girl. Possibly the inspiration for the reality TV series, “The Bachelorette.” Or maybe not.

- Amazon.com: The Hawbucks

It's certainly not one of Masefield's better efforts, but at least his (somewhat ineffectual) hero gets the girl in the end - or so we're assured in the final sentence.

John Masefield: The Hawbucks (1929)

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John Masefield: The Bird of Dawning (1933)

The Bird of Dawning
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., November 6, 1933]

As I quoted in my recent post on great storm descriptions in literature:

The Bird of Dawning is the remarkable story of a crew and the principal hero, Cruiser Trewsbury, between shipwreck and triumph. When their clipper, participant in the annual tea race from China to London, sinks on its journey home, Cruiser takes command of the only boat which escapes the disaster. A gruelling journey of 700 miles across the Atlantic in an open boat awaits the small crew. The discovery, soon to be made, that they have an insufficient quantity of both water and food on board, dashes all hopes. Passing ships which fail to spot the shipwrecked and sharks greedily approaching the boat contribute to the picture of doom. By remarkable circumstances, however, they discover a ship, one of the other tea clippers, drifting on the sea with its crew gone. With the crew back in the race for the coveted price of being the first tea clipper of the season to dock in London ...

- Amazon.com.uk: The Bird of Dawning

The book includes a marvellous set-piece passage describing the effects of a single great wave on a ship at sea.

John Masefield: The Bird of Dawning (1933)

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John Masefield: The Taking of the Gry (1934)

The Taking of the Gry
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., September 28, 1934]

The Taking of the Gry is a novel by John Masefield published in 1934, and set in the fictional Central or South American state of Santa Barbara, also the setting for ODTAA, Sard Harker, and part of The Midnight Folk. The novel is set in 1911, some time after Don Manuel, the benevolent dictator in Sard Harker, has died. It is an adventure story about the taking of a ship called the "Gry". It features the only known map (or, rather, map illustration) of the City of Santa Barbara, and an appendix setting out the history of the fictional state of Santa Barbara.

- Wikipedia: The Taking of the Gry

One of Masefield's weaker novels, the motivation behind it may have been a desire to mix the South American world of Sard Harker and ODTAA with the more purely maritime themes explored by him in The Bird of Dawning. While the result is a perfectly serviceable thriller, it fails to reach the intensity of either of these settings used separately.

John Masefield: The Taking of the Gry (1934)

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John Masefield: The Box of Delights (1935)

The Box of Delights, or When the Wolves were Running
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., August 30, 1935]

The Box of Delights is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield. It is a sequel to The Midnight Folk ...
Kay Harker is returning from boarding school when he finds himself mixed up in a battle to possess a magical box. It allows the owner to shrink in size, to fly swiftly, to go into the past and to experience the magical wonders contained within the box.
The current owner of the box is an old Punch and Judy man called Cole Hawlings whom Kay meets at the railway station. They develop an instant rapport, which leads Cole to confide that he is being chased by a magician called Abner Brown and his gang, which includes Kay's former governess. For safety, Cole (who turns out to be the medieval philosopher and alleged magician Ramon Llull) entrusts the box to Kay. The schoolboy then goes on to have many adventures as he protects the box from those who wish to use it for bad deeds.

- Wikipedia: The Box of Delights

If anything, The Box of Delights is even weirder and less logical than The Midnight Folk. Perhaps for that reason, I like it even more than its predecessor. I loved the sidelights on such matters as the siege of Troy, the theories of Ramon Llull, and the court of King Arthur.

While much of this magic was lost in the BBC dramatisation of the novel - the first, and (to date) only film version of any of Masefield's novels - it was nice to revisit Masefield's fantasy world again, albeit in rather truncated form.

John Masefield: The Box of Delights (1984)

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John Masefield: Victorious Troy (1935)

Victorious Troy, or The Hurrying Angel
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 31, 1935]

As I quoted in my recent post on great storm descriptions in literature:

Victorious Troy is set during the grain race of 1922. ... The ship from which the novel gets its title is struck by a cyclone in the South Pacific and it is Dick Pomfret, the senior apprentice, who valiantly saves the vessel.

- Philip W. Errington, John Masefield: The "Great Auk" of English Literature. A Bibliography. London: The British Library / New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2004: 420.

It's sometimes been compared with Joseph Conrad's "Typhoon", but a more accurate parallel would be with Richard Hughes' 1938 novel In Hazard, which I also discuss in my post.

John Masefield: Victorious Troy (1935)

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John Masefield: Eggs and Baker (1936)

Eggs and Baker, or The Days of Trial
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 26, 1936]

As one reviewer put it:

In this novel, set in a 19th century small town in the English countryside, a tradesman takes up the cause of a half-wit accused of murder.

- AbeBooks: Eggs and Baker

Like all courthouse dramas, there's a certain verve and suspense in the story which keeps one reading. Masefield's (to my mind justified) prejudice against the aristocracy in general, and landed gentry in particular, is prominently on display.

John Masefield: Eggs and Baker (1936)

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John Masefield: The Square Peg (1937)

The Square Peg, or The Gun Fella
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 18, 1937]

This was the headline for Percy Hutchinson's review in New York Times:

John Masefield's New Novel The Square Peg Has Depths That Some of the Poet Laureate's More Flashing Work Has Not.

- AbeBooks: The Square Peg

Percy Hutchinson: Review of The Square Peg (November 21, 1937)

Whether or not that's true, this sequel to Eggs and Baker pits the now-prosperous son of the protagonist of the earlier novel against a particularly loathsome and inbred bunch of country snobs. He scores points off them rather in the manner of the hero of The Street of To-Day, written a quarter of a century earlier.

John Masefield: The Square Peg (1937)

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John Masefield: Dead Ned (1938)

Dead Ned: The Autobiography of a Corpse Who recovered Life within the Coast of Dead Ned and came to what Fortune you shall hear
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., August 18, 1938]

As the publisher describes it, Dead Ned is:

A strange and gripping tale,set in the eighteenth century, of how Ned Mansell, a young medical student, finds himself accused of a crime he never committed.

- Google Books: Dead Ned

When I first started to read the Puffin edition of this novel in my early teens, I was struck at once by how good it was: I'd resigned myself to the fact that he'd written only two thoroughly original children's books, The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. This, though very different in style and approach, was clearly their equal.

At the time Leon Garfield was making quite a reputation for himself with his pastiche eighteenth and early nineteenth century adventure stories. Masefield's grasp of the era seemed far more sure-footed to me: his control of the idiom clearly superior. I still feel that it's one of his very best books.

John Masefield: Dead Ned (1974)

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John Masefield: Live and Kicking Ned (1939)

Live and Kicking Ned: A Continuation of the Tale of Dead Ned
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 30, 1939]

As one online reviewer remarks:

This is a fantastic story by a fantastic story-teller. But be warned: the Puffin edition (ie. the 1975 paperback edition) is abridged. The Heinemann hardback edition is the full version.

- Amazon.com: Live and Kicking Ned

Or, as Google Books puts it, it "continues the tale of the young doctor in Dead Ned, who goes to Africa on a slave ship."

There's room for lots of interesting nautical details in Masefield's description of the voyage to Africa, the landing in the Bight of Benin, and Ned's subsequent escape and discovery of a mysterious, Rider Haggard-like lost city in the heart of the jungle.

I'd been eagerly awaiting this "sequel" ever since I first read Dead Ned, and was a little disappointed to see that it had been abridged. It read a little oddly, I thought - not quite as smoothly as its predecessor.

When, some years later, I found a copy of the original novel, I began to understand the motives of the editors at Puffin Books in abridging it. Certainly it read better in its original form, but there was a great deal of unnecessary detail about the bureaucratic infighting in the Lost City, which was threatened by an imminent invasion. Clearly Masefield meant this as satire on the unpreparedness of England for the oncoming Second World War, but it did have the effect of undercutting the realism of the rest of the narrative.

If the sequel had lived to the original novel, the "Ned" novels would have stood as one of Masefield's finest achievements. As it is, there are a few problems with them. They remain a bit of a might-have-been, but they also contain some of his very best and most atmospheric writing.

John Masefield: Live and Kicking Ned (1975)

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John Masefield: Basilissa (1940)

Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., September 16, 1940]

As one contemporary reviewer put it:

Theodora, Empress of the East, was in her youth an actress and courtesan of Constantinople. After retiring from the stage and reforming her conduct, she gained the affection of Justinian, who later married her and proclaimed her Empress and his equal colleague in the empire.
One who was plainly her bitterest and least scrupulous enemy has told us that she was beyond words depraved, and that she added to her depravity a thirst for blood and for gold.
She was of poor parents and tainted youth. And yet, while still a young woman, this former mime and dancer became the wife of the most remarkable ruler in Christian history, whose reign she helped to make glorious and memorable. This rule, and some of her recorded words, speak for her.
We are told so little of her rise from poverty to splendor that that brief part of her life is open to the speculation of the romancer. John Masefield takes it as the subject of his new romance, "Basilissa."
This is a novel of adventure in love and in politics, of intrigue and of romance.

- Goodreads: Basilissa

What the reviewer fails to mention is the clear parallel Masefield attempts to establish between his protagonist, the fifth-century Byzantine Empress Theodora, and Mrs. Wallis Simpson, heroine of the 1938 abdication saga. It was Masefield's settled conviction that the addition of some new blood to the Windsors was long overdue, and that Mrs. Simpson would make a splendid Queen Consort for Edward VIII.

Whatever your (or posterity in general's) opinion of this view, it's interesting how closely the whole débâcle resembles the more recent saga of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

John Masefield: Basilissa (1948)

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John Masefield: Conquer (1941)

Conquer: A Tale of the Nika Rebellion in Byzantium
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., October 6, 1941]

As another reviewer put it (tongue heavily in cheek?):

This story is an account of the very famous Faction struggle which nearly caused the complete destruction of Byzantium in the first week of the year 532.
The tale makes no reference whatever to any living person or existing institution. When it refers to the Dinner-Green and Sea-Blue Factions it alludes to Byzantine parties long since happily extinct, and to no existing parties wearing those or any other colours.
The book is fiction, based on the histories of the sixth century.

- Goodreads: Conquer

The folly and hubris on display in the novel are clearly meant to parallel the contemporary state of England, in the very early days of the Second World War. Masefield's patriotism was enraged by the pointless faction fighting indulged in by all political parties during the so-called "Phony War."

John Masefield: Conquer (1941)

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John Masefield: Badon Parchments (1947)

Badon Parchments
[London: William Heinemann, Ltd., December 1, 1947]

As yet another reviewer put it:

The Dark Ages of Britain have become a little less dark during the last thirty years, but are still far from bright. The dimness gives them a fascination; one longs to know more of them. To many, the questions occur: What was the real achievement of Arthur? What was the Battle of Badon Hill? Where was Badon Hill?
There are many answers to all these questions. Men answer them according to a little knowledge that suits a charming theory. The last question has been recently answered certainly eleven times. Eleven places at least have been claimed as Badon. Most of them are in the southern half of England; but the Badon of one man is eighty miles from the Badon of his opponent; and who shall say, that either is wrong?
Badon Parchments is a work of fiction, based upon the normal darkness of the Dark Ages, but speculating on what may have been, for all that we know.

- Goodreads: Badon Parchments

Compared to later attempts to revive the Dark Ages of King Arthur such as Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset (1963), Mary Stewart's "Merlin" trilogy (1970-79), or even Henry Treece's The Great Captains (1956), Masefield's last novel reads rather pallidly now.

It may lack the vividness and local colour of many of its successors, but there's a certain ingenuity behind his decision to tell the story of the great battle purely through the medium of diplomatic dispatches sent back home by a Byzantine envoy to Arthur's court. Much of what occurs in the narrative proper has accordingly to be deduced from between the lines.

John Masefield: Map in Badon Parchments (1947)

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William Rothenstein: John Masefield (1920)

John Edward Masefield
(1878-1967)

Bibliography

Books I own are marked in bold:

Fiction:

A Mainsail Haul (1905)
A Tarpaulin Muster (1907)
Captain Margaret (1908)
Multitude and Solitude (1909)
Martin Hyde: The Duke's Messenger (1909)
A Book of Discoveries (1910)
- A Book of Discoveries. Illustrated by R. Gordon Browne. London: Wells, Gardner Darton & Co., 1910.
Lost Endeavour (1910)
The Street of Today (1911)
Jim Davis (1911)
The Taking of Helen (1923)
Sard Harker (1924)
ODTAA (1926)
The Midnight Folk (1927)
The Hawbucks (1929)
The Bird of Dawning (1933)
The Taking of the Gry (1934)
The Box of Delights: or When the Wolves Were Running (1935)
Victorious Troy: or The Hurrying Angel (1935)
Eggs and Baker (1936)
The Square Peg: or The Gun Fella (1937)
Dead Ned (1938)
Live and Kicking Ned (1939)
Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora (1940)
Conquer: A Tale of the Nika Rebellion in Byzantium (1941)
Badon Parchments (1947)

Secondary:

Hamilton, W. H. John Masefield, A Popular Study. 1922. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1925.
[Biggane, Cecil. John Masefield: A Study. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1924.]
[Simmons, Charles H. A Bibliography of John Masefield. London: Oxford University Press / New York: Columbia University Press, 1930.]
[Nevinson, Henry W. John Masefield: An Appreciation. Together with a Bibliography. London: William Heinemann, 1931.]
Thomas, Gilbert. John Masefield. Modern Writers Series. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1932.
Strong, L. A. G. John Masefield. Published for The British Council & The National Book League. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1952.
Spark, Muriel. John Masefield. London: Peter Nevill Ltd., 1953.
- Spark, Muriel. John Masefield. 1953. Rev. ed. 1962. London: Pimlico, 1992.
[Drew, Fraser Bragg. “Some Contributions to the Bibliography of John Masefield: 1.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 53 (June, 1959): 188-96.]
[Drew, Fraser Bragg. “Some Contributions to the Bibliography of John Masefield: 2.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 53 (October, 1959): 262-67.]
Handley-Taylor, Geoffrey, ed. John Masefield, O.M., The Queen’s Poet Laureate: A Bibliography and Eighty-First Birthday Tribute. London: Cranbrook Tower Press, 1960.
[Fisher, Margery. John Masefield. A Bodley Head Monograph. London: The Bodley Head, 1963.]
Lamont, Corliss, ed. Remembering John Masefield. Introduction by Judith Masefield. London: Kaye & Ward Ltd., 1972.
[Drew, Fraser. “Selected Bibliography.” In John Masefield’s England: A Study of the National Themes in His Work (New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1973): 233-50.]
Sternlicht, Sanford. John Masefield. Twayne English Authors Series, 209. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1977.
Smith, Constance Babington. John Masefield: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Errington, Philip W., ed. John Masefield: The “Great Auk” of English Literature. A Bibliography. London: The British Library / New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2004.

Philip W. Errington: John Masefield: The “Great Auk” of English Literature (2004)

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To My Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns:

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there’s an end of me.

- John Masefield

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category - English Poetry (post-1900): Alphabetical

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