In an increasingly digitalized world, literature is fast becoming impermanent. Books are becoming bits of data meant to last as long as the technology used to display them. A century from now today’s eBooks will be lost to time and progress, forgotten by the past and unavailable for circulation. Historians will look back on our generations and find little more than a large gap where works of fiction ought to be. We ourselves can look back on writers like J. Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker because their print-and-paper books require nothing more than a good set of eyes in order to read them. I am not opposed to eBooks. My novelette Synthetic Saints will be published as such later this year. I am, however, opposed to those who say they represent the death of print-and-paper publishing. That is why, as a bibliophile, I am extremely passionate about independent publishers like Swan River Press.
Swan River Press has been publishing chapbooks and literary pamphlets since 2003. With the release of Rosalie Parker’s The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales in 2010, Swan River has produced absolutely stunning hardbound books – books that will stand the test of time. These books will persist a century from now, and while they may not thank Brian J. Showers now, I’m certain readers in 2112 will be thanking him profusely for the work he’s done! Brian was generous enough with his time to answer a few questions I had for him.
Swan River Press has been publishing chapbooks and literary pamphlets since 2003. With the release of Rosalie Parker’s The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales in 2010, Swan River has produced absolutely stunning hardbound books – books that will stand the test of time. These books will persist a century from now, and while they may not thank Brian J. Showers now, I’m certain readers in 2112 will be thanking him profusely for the work he’s done! Brian was generous enough with his time to answer a few questions I had for him.
JASON: You recently co-edited Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Hippocampus Press, 2011). Were you interested in Le Fanu before moving to Dublin, or did the move to Le Fanu’s haunts spark your curiosity?
BRIAN: That’s an interesting question. When I was first visiting Dublin in 1999, I made a point of seeking out Le Fanu’s house on Merrion Square. Even got my photo taken in front of it! Yeah, I’d read Le Fanu (and Stoker and Dunsany, et al.) before moving to Dublin, but it wasn’t until maybe a year after I’d been living here—so around 2001—that I was reading a biography of Le Fanu and realised he was buried a short fifteen-minute walk from my flat, where I was sat reading. It was sort of an epiphany: literary history, the type that really interests me, was not far beyond my doorstep. I immediately grabbed my jacket and headed out the door to see the tomb for myself. It didn’t take long for me to realise that Dublin is saturated with places important to the history of supernatural literature. That was more or less the impetus behind Literary Walking Tour of Gothic Dublin too.
J: The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories reads like a walking tour of Rathmines. You have a knack for telling ghosts stories the way they should be told. By blending historical narrative with hints of local lore you breathe life back into the dead. You clearly have a passion for it. What inspired it?
B: I just like to read ghost stories, I guess, so I thought I’d try writing them. With regard to The Bleeding Horse and Old Albert, I wanted to graft stories onto my adopted neighbourhood. Just like I was saying before, when I realised all of Dublin’s literary associations, both fictional and real, I eventually decided to contribute some of my own. For me it was a bit like a game. I thought, hey, that house or bridge or church or whatever is kinda interesting. And since I pass these places every day of my life, I thought I’d make my life more interesting by making up stories about them. So that’s what I did. Of course there are “real” stories about many of these places already. It’s called history. But rather than eject all of that history, I decided it would be much better to use it and work with it. Hopefully no one can see the sutures between what is real and what isn’t!
J: How long have you been a publisher?
B: 2003 is when I “published” my first chapbook The Old Tailor and the Gaunt Man. I put the word published in quotes because I created the chapbook as a Halloween card to give to friends and family. Ditto for all the other chapbooks, though some I wrote for Christmas. They were labour intensive to put together, but that was part of the gift. I then had a few people approach me asking if I’d publish their stories as chapbooks—something I couldn’t easily do given the lengthy process. But I did discover I wanted to work with others, which is why I decided to start doing booklets (which are the A5 format productions like Haunted Histories and the Stoker Series). Initially I wanted to make it easy on myself, so I did them as staple-bound booklets. But then my creative side took over and I kept trying to come up with ways to make them nicer. So I started using nicer paper for the covers, hand-sewing the pages and giving them endpapers. As a publisher of hardback books, that started just a couple years ago when I decided to publish Rosalie Parker’s debut collection, The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales. Because why not? Seemed like a good idea at the time and I’m learning that in fact it was.
J: On your website you state that it takes 70.5 hours to make 300 chapbooks. The care with which you craft them is not only impressive, but reassuring to bibliophiles like me. Your relatively recent foray into the hardbound world has been equally impressive. From Rosalie Parker’s The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales (2010) and Lucy Boston’s Curfew & Other Eerie Tales (2011) to your forthcoming releases, Peter Bell’s Strange Epiphanies (2012) and R.B. Russell’s Ghosts (2012), you have applied the same care and consideration to their production as you have to your chapbooks. Do you find the publishing process daunting, rewarding, or perhaps a bit of both?
B: It’s definitely daunting, if only because there are larger financial transactions involved. It’s important to me that I keep all of this stuff on the level and conduct myself professionally. It’s also daunting because there are publishers out there who have already set the standard quite high—do I really need to name check folks like Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker of Tartarus, Barbara and Christopher Roden of Ash-Tree, Robert and Sarah Morgan of Sarob? But the rewards easily outweigh the daunts. It’s definitely a privilege to work with the people I have so far, doubly so knowing that they trust me with their work. At the end of the day, I just like sharing great stories with others.
J: Using Curfew & Other Eerie Tales as an example, can you take us through the publishing process? From inception to completion, what steps are involved in publishing hardbound books like Curfew?
B: Curfew was a bit of a different one since Lucy M. Boston is twenty years deceased. All the other authors I’ve worked with are more or less still alive. Robert Lloyd Parry originally brought Boston’s unpublished stories to my attention. I’d seen him perform his one-man M.R. James show at Hemingford Grey Manor, where Boston lived, and had read a couple of the Green Knowe books, so was already familiar with her. Diana Boston, Lucy’s daughter-in-law gave Robert permission to send me the manuscripts and, well, you can guess the rest. The main difference between Curfew and the other books is that I had to transcribe a good few stories from the manuscripts, which had Boston’s handwritten edits. Occasionally I had to decipher scribbles or even make the odd editorial decision where I would have preferred to consult the author. Diana gave her approval every step of the way. But hopefully we did the text justice.
Once the text was I order, I asked Diana if there were any relevant images that we could use for the cover. I recalled seeing a few around the Manor when I visited, and of course Diana’s late husband Peter illustrated many of his mother’s books. Fortunately Diana had a couple of items that suited perfectly—we used a painting of Boston by Elisabeth Vellacott for the dust jacket and a painting of pre-restoration Hemingford Grey by William Garden Fraser for the boards. I really like knowing that even the cover images have a close association with Boston. Then I send all the design elements to my good friend Meggan Kehrli in Chicago. I’ve known Meggan since high school and we’ve worked with each other plenty of times. You’ll see her name on a ton of my publications. She’s a graphic designer by trade and really fantastic to work with. She’s the one who makes the Swan River Press books look as professional as they do.
J: The books are beautiful; Meggan has been doing an amazing job!
The Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu series’ published by Swan River offer readers a scholarly look at the works of these two writers. Their more famous works are so often reproduced they often overshadow the lesser known but equally (if not more so) fascinating tales. If you were to introduce someone to Le Fanu for the very first time, what story would you recommend and why?
The Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu series’ published by Swan River offer readers a scholarly look at the works of these two writers. Their more famous works are so often reproduced they often overshadow the lesser known but equally (if not more so) fascinating tales. If you were to introduce someone to Le Fanu for the very first time, what story would you recommend and why?
B: I always have trouble with this question. Someone asked me that on the radio last Halloween. I blurted out “Green Tea” simply because I suspect most of the listeners had not read that one. But assuming most of your readers have . . . I’ll go for Le Fanu’s “faerie” stories: “The Child That Went with the Faeries”, “Stories of Lough Guir” and “Laura Silver Bell”. I’ve always felt these sorts of stories are very effective. Haunting in a different way than his ghost stories, definitely Irish in tone. Peter Bell wrote an essay about “The Child That Went with the Faeries” that rightfully observes the similarities between Le Fanu’s faerie stories and Machen’s little people stories. He said they share the same “sinister ambiance.”
J: The world is well-acquainted with Stoker’s Dracula, and to a lesser degree Dracula’s Guest. In December you published The Definitive Judges House with an introduction by Mike Mignola. What lesser known work would you recommend to readers who want to explore Stoker beyond his most famous creation?
B: One of my absolute favourite Stoker novels is his first: The Snake’s Pass. It’s a Gothic tale set in the west of Ireland—in fact Stoker’s only novel set in Ireland. There’s mystery, romance, folklore, buried treasure . . . go and read it if you can track down a copy! I also have a lot of time for The Jewel of Seven Stars, Stoker’s Egyptomania novel about the resurrection of a mummified queen! While Stoker may not have been the greatest prose stylist, there's still much in his work to be discovered and enjoyed. Though I should probably be honest and point out that in The Snake's Pass there's a lengthy section in which one character describes how to drain a bog--written entirely in Irish dialect. It's painful to read, but thankfully only a few pages long.
J: I have not been able to acquire a copy of Acquainted With the Night (Ash-Tree Press, 2004) so I am eagerly awaiting my copy of The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man along with your other chapbooks. Jim Rockhill refers to it as “an old fashioned ghost story . . . reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.” He complements your “expert hand at deploying the shadows and portents, ironic disclosures, and gradual accumulation of detail, which still make the masters of supernatural fiction so chillingly entertaining to this day.” Aside from Le Fanu, are there other writers you draw inspiration from?
B: I’m sure the list is pretty average. I like all the old standards like James, Lovecraft, Machen, Blackwood . . . If I were to choose some of my particular favourites, I’d have to go with William Hope Hodgson, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, John Bellairs, Robert Aickman. I don’t necessarily try to emulate, but these are guys who, when I read them, I thought (and still think) “Hey, cool!” These are writers who I get really excited about and feel compelled to share with others.
J: That’s how I feel about Boston. I’m almost ashamed to admit I was completely unfamiliar with her before reading Curfew & Other Eerie Tales. The collection quickly became one of my favourites. You emboss your publications with both passion and knowledge. Curfew exemplifies your willingness to share both with the reading public and should certainly be commended. Given that you now have two forthcoming titles in 2012 it might be a bit presumptuous to ask (but I will anyway) what can we expect next from Brian J. Showers and/or Swan River Press?
B: I’d definitely like to keep publishing stuff, though I’m doing a masters in popular literature at Trinity this year, so time is something that’s difficult to come by lately. In fact, I should continue writing this paper on Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian . . .
As far as my own writing, I’m the supreme procrastinator. I’ve more Rathmines stories to write, I’ve a half written collection of Irish-based ghost stories somewhere on my hard drive, I’d like to do a comic book adaptation of a famous ghost story, the title of which I won’t reveal . . . there’s plenty of other things on my to do list, which I’ve since lost. But before that, I predict a series of brilliantly written research papers.
Visit Swan River Press here.
You can purchase Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu here.
