Author: DAGLESS, Thomas.
Title: The Light in Dends Wood and Other Stories.
Description: London, Greening & Co 1903. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in black and white. Marks and splodges, a well read but decent copy. ¶ Only edition. This would be a long forgotten book but for trumping Amanda M'Kittrick Ros, beating her 'Irene Iddesleigh' for first place in the prestigious 'Fifty Worst Books' gathered by Harry Graham for a select circle that consisted of himself, E.V. Lucas, Anthony Hope, Barry Pain, Edmund Gosse, Belloc and Frank Richardson. Graham had copies of maybe the first five titles specially bound. I still don't what volumes three and four are. It's taken me fifteen or so years to find a copy of this and learn whether it deserves to be volume one - ahead of Irene Iddesleigh as volume two. No. It doesn't. The title story has a decent premise - half caste Anglo-Zulu youth in England unknowingly falls in love with the woman who spurned his father and drove him off to Africa. Then it gets complicated and Dagless seems unable to remember, paragraph to paragraph, whether he's writing a horror story or a crime mystery and who his main characters are. It's near senseless but it's no Amanda Ros. All four stories are consistent in that you finish them wondering what the hell happened. The other three have plenty of inter-racial lust, murder and maniacs. Don't forget the voluptuous mummy and the vampire apes.

Keywords: literature fiction thrillers c20th England fantasy horror mystery