Fuchsia
Travel

What a treat to have such a lovely copy of this first edition of Dion Fortune’s novel Demon Lover in the original dust wrapper.

Surely one of the most interesting figures of the early twentieth century occult revival, Fortune was responsible for my perhaps my favourite aspect of the WWII Home Front war effort: the Magical Battle of Britain. Through a kind of correspondence course, she instructed fellow members of her Society of Inner Light to focus their psychic forces on the protection of the United Kingdom from German invasion. That’s quite the Halloween party!

This spooky novel of love and betrayal is set in Bloomsbury, not far from our Bedford Square bookshop.

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Ben
Fine printing and private press

'Alas poor Yorick'

Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of the most enduring meditations on mortality ever written. What scene could better represent the human confrontation with death than the moment that Hamlet beholds the skull of the fondly remembered court jester from his childhood, Yorick. The contrast between Yorick's lifeless earthly remains and Hamlet's memories of 'those lips that I have kissed' sends shivers down the spine, precisely because it is something to which everyone, at some point, will inevitably have to relate.

Illustrated by Edward Gordon Craig, based on his designs for the wildly avant-garde production of the play by the Moscow Art Theatre, and printed at Count Harry Kessler's Cranach Press, this edition of Hamlet is one of the most beautiful (and spooky) books of the 20^th century.

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Hazel
Early European Books & Illuminations

My pick for Spooky season is this sixteenth-century treatise, illustrated with copies of Hans Holbein's fabulous Dance of Death woodcuts. The skeletal Death here reminds me a bit of the character in the Terry Pratchett books (which I love!) - funny, very occasionally playful, sympathetic, ever-present and invisible to those he visits until their final moments.

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Alice
Autographs & Modern books

So hard to choose! But for me, it's M R James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904).

It features two of the best ghost tales of all time (in my opinion) - Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad, and The Mezzotint. Both absolutely masterclasses in prickling unease. I will be doing my annual re-read of them soon in the run up to Halloween!

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I also love the Pienkowski Haunted House pop-up book. Dynamic, colourful, spooky fun. This is one I gravitate to even more now I have small child (although I fear the pop-up mechanisms wouldn't last long with the hands of a child nearby!)

Euphemia
Far East – China & Japan

I would have to go for this series of Japanese publications called Asubesutokan Tsushin, or Message from the Asbestos Hall, from 1989. It was published to commemorate the death of one of Japan's greatest Avant Garde figures, Hijikata Tatsumi. He was from the north of Japan (Akita – where I'm from!) and was the father of a contemporary dance called butoh. Hijikata led a dance troupe called the Asbestokan (Asbestos Hall).

If you ever have the chance to see butoh, it's really amazing. The movements are very unnatural and can be quite disturbing. Performances often have a spooky feel, especially when the dancers paint themselves in white!

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Claire
Cataloguer

Harry Clarke's illustrations for this edition of Edgar Allan Poe's work are a fantastic and eerie reflection of Poe's dark tales and haunting style of writing - a perfect reflection of the Halloween spirit!

Bonny
Modern Literature

I think that my pick has to be The Monk by Matthew Lewis, this melodramatic Gothic story has a bit of everything, the devil, magic trees, ghosts and more! And this continental edition is just charming.

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Gus
Philosophy and Economics

Submitted with a wry-smile, but the overlapping's of Marxism and ghoulishness extend far beyond the immortal opening line of the Communist Manifesto. The Marx family were great devotees of English literature, particularly the Romantic and Gothic tradition, and his descriptions of alienation under capitalism in Das Kapital are awash with monstrous, vampiric and Promethean metaphor.

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