Forrest Reid

'A masterpiece.' - E. M. Forster '[A] strange, sinister, and unforgettable story.' - Manchester Guardian 'Forrest Reid has . . . beautiful, rhythmical prose, a true and permanent voice.' - John McGahern 'None of our contemporaries can describe childhood and youth as truly as he does.' - V. S. Pritchett When Following Darkness first appeared in 1912, critics did not know what to make of it. Sentimental novels of childhood and adolescence were popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, but here was something completely new in English fiction, a book that explored a teenager's thoughts and emotions with unflinching honesty. One leading critic denounced the novel's protagonist Peter Waring as a 'subject for the pathologist rather than the novelist,' an 'evil' character who 'unutterably disgusts', and the book's allusions to Peter's sexual awakening and his rejection of Christ disturbed contemporary readers. Following Darkness is the story of sixteen-year-old Peter's conflict with his staunchly religious father, whose religion and values Peter rejects with contempt, his burgeoning friendship with Owen Gill, and his growing passion for Katherine Dale. With keen psychological insight, Reid creates in Peter a complex and fascinating character: morally ambiguous, deeply flawed, snobbish, conceited and selfish, yet ultimately sympathetic. Acclaimed as a masterpiece by E.M. Forster and a possible influence on Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Following Darkness was unlike any novel that had preceded it, and it remains one of Forrest Reid's most interesting works. This first-ever republication of the novel includes a new introduction by Andrew Doyle. **

The second of Reid’s three novels featuring Tom Barber, The Retreat earned universal critical acclaim when first published in 1936. The Retreat opens with a vivid dream about a sorcerer and his boy apprentice. The dreamer is Tom Barber, age 13, who, like many intelligent and sensitive children, moves between the world of everyday life and that of the imagination. “I pretend things, and all at once they become real,” Tom says, and they become real for the reader as well, as we follow him over the course of one summer during which the lines between reality and fantasy are frequently blurred. In his depiction of Tom’s fantastic adventures in an unseen world – his attempts to thwart the malign influence of the cat Henry, whom he has observed scratching cabbalistic symbols on the gravel path; his meetings with the beautiful boy-angel Gamelyn; his conversations with animals; his experiences in the Garden of Eden – Forrest Reid’s delicate artistry is at its finest and most delightful.

From Amazon.com: Fifteen year old Graham Iddesleigh dreams of a past life, where he frolicked in a garden with a young Greek god. However, his dreams threaten to come to an abrupt end when his father decides to send him away to school. But what is Graham's surprise when he meets a fellow schoolboy, Harold Brocklehurst, who is the very image of the Greek god of his dreams! Graham falls deeply in love with his new friend, and the two boys spend an unforgettable summer together -- until a heartbreaking tragedy occurs, a tragedy that will change Graham's life forever. The Garden God was first published in 1905, in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trial and other scandals, and risked controversy with its undercurrents of pederastic desire. Forrest Reid dedicated the novel to his idol, Henry James, who was outraged and never spoke to Reid again. This first ever scholarly edition of the novel includes a new introduction and notes by Michael Matthew Kaylor, who dismisses the traditional view of Reid as merely a provincial novelist and argues for his inclusion among the major Uranian writers such as Pater, Wilde, and Frederick Rolfe.

An examination of the poet's life and works, side by side.

Left in the care of his unloving stepmother after his father’s death, sixteen-year-old Tom Barber has a vivid dream one night in which he sees his Uncle Stephen, whom he has never met and who is rumoured to have been mixed up in scandal and the practice of black magic. Unhappy at home and not knowing what to expect when he arrives at Uncle Stephen’s manor house, Tom runs away, hoping to live with his uncle. In his depiction of Tom’s initiation into Uncle Stephen’s mystic creed, his illicit love for the poacher Jim Deverell, and his adventures with Philip, a mysterious boy with a strange and fantastic connection to Uncle Stephen’s past and Tom’s future, Forrest Reid’s artistic vision finds its fullest expression. The first in Reid’s Tom Barber trilogy, Uncle Stephen (1931) is both a tale of boyhood adventure in the tradition of Mark Twain and a story of the supernatural in the vein of Sheridan Le Fanu and Walter de la Mare.