At The Change Of The Moon by Bernard C. Blake (edited by Johnny Mains)

Book Review

Lauren McMenemy

Johnny Mains is a literary gravedigger. He’s made quite the name for himself unearthing from archives those lost and forgotten manuscripts from authors of the past, both known (Algernon Blackwood, Edith Nesbit, Daphne Du Maurier) and unknown. You may have even read some of the collections he’s put together with the British Library, such as The Dead of Summer, Illusions of Presence, or Halloweird. 

Johnny isn’t stopping there, though. Together with Trevor Kennedy of Phantasmagoria Magazine, he’s established Mislaid Books, a new imprint to publish the work of even more lost authors, bringing their stories back into the spotlight. At The Change of the Moon is the imprint’s first release, a new edition of a lost weird fiction collection by Hampshire-born writer Bernard Cecil Blake. Though he wrote three works of fiction, this was Blake’s only work of speculative fiction before he died during the Battle of Lys in 1918. 

And it’s very much in that turn-of-the-20th-century weird gothic vein, something that wouldn’t be out of place in the BL’s Tales of the Weird. We find ourselves trapped in the Black Hart pub during a storm that seems like it will never end, so two of the residents decide to swap uncanny stories to outdo each other while an unnamed narrator listens on as judge. What follows is about nine stories of weirdness, covering plague, poisoning, atoms, mesmerism, lost noses, and more, each presented as if you’ve joined the group of gents around the hearth in the dark inn, ale in hand, listening intently waiting to be scared by the shake of thunder. Interestingly, many of these tales concern “madness”, making it a neat companion to Flame Tree’s recent This Way Lies Madness collection. 

Less essential are the other stories included in this collection for the sake of completism. Blake was young and inexperienced, and that’s clear from the handful of other poems and stories. That said, the main course, as well as Mains’ biographical essay that gives context to Blake’s life and tragic death – along with some relevant found documents from the time – make this a worthy addition to any historical weird tales bookshelf.