The Human Chord – Algernon Blackwood
The Human Chord by Algernon Blackwood, intro by Mike Ashley / ISBN 9780712355414 / 224-page paperback / From the British Library’s “Tales of the Weird” series / published 2024
Light rubbing to the covers from inbound shipping (if you own books from this series, you know the ones with uncoated cover stock almost always have this issue)
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When Robert Spinrobin, drifting through life in a daydream, answers a newspaper ad asking for an imaginative tenor with a grasp of ancient languages, he soon finds himself travelling to rural Wales and the home of ex-clergyman, Philip Skale. Here Skale, the housekeeper Mrs. Mawle and her niece, Miriam, have been pursuing a new science, harnessing sound to discover the true names of people – and recording the uncanny phenomena and transformations that this naming ritual brings in the subject. With possibilities of mind-melding and sublime spiritual awakenings already documented, it is not long before Skale pivots towards a grander master plan to intone a forbidden name beyond the preserve of humanity – while a gathering storm of disastrous cosmic consequences threatens to break. First published in 1910 but lost for most of the twentieth century,
Blackwood’s tour-de-force novel is long overdue rediscovery. Featuring a new, incisive introduction from one of the foremost experts on Blackwood, Mike Ashley.
