Stacpoole, H de Vere
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1863-1951) UK medical doctor and author, younger brother of William Henry Stacpoole; best known for his South Sea romances, including non-sf Robinsonades like, most famously, The Blue Lagoon: A Romance (1908), filmed as The Blue Lagoon (1923, 1948, 1950 and 1980), or The Chank Shell: A Tropical Romance of Love and Treasure (1930; vt The Island of Lost Women 1930), which adds hints of a Lost Race. He wrote several weird novels: Pierrot!: A Story (1896), involving an uncanny Doppelganger and parricide; Death, the Knight, and the Lady: A Ghost Story (1897), an extremely complicated tale involving a curse, Reincarnation and some highly Decadent Gender reversals; The Man Who Lost Himself (1918), which, like Pierrot!, involves its protagonist with an uncanny lookalike, and was filmed as The Man Who Lost Himself (1920 and 1941); plus The Ghost Girl (1918) and The Sunstone (1936), both of marginal interest.
His non-supernatural sf was generally restricted to the magazines; it includes a world-Disaster story, "The White Eye" (20 January 1918 Popular Magazine). The City in the Sea (2 October-? The Yellow Magazine as "The City Under the Sea"; 1926) is a Lost World novel about an ancient Greek city surviving Under the Sea. The Story of My Village (1947) directly cites Hiroshima as an augur of doom, then depicts a plague of blindness which stops progress short, forcing humanity to abandon their cities and live in villages; the world is thus saved from nuclear Holocaust. [JC/JE]
Henry De Vere Stacpoole
born Kingstown in Taney, near Dublin, Ireland: 9 April 1863
died Isle of Wight: 12 April 1951
works
- Pierrot!: A Story (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1896) [in the publisher's Pierrot's Library series: illus/hb/Aubrey Beardsley]
- Pierrette (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1900) [illus/hb/Charles Robinson]
- Death, the Knight, and the Lady: A Ghost Story (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1897) [intended for the publisher's discontinued Pierrot's Library series: hb/]
- The Blue Lagoon: A Romance (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1908) [hb/]
- The Man Who Lost Himself (London: Hutchinson and Compay, 1918) [hb/]
- The Ghost Girl (London: Hutchinson and Compay, 1918) [hb/]
- The City in the Sea (New York: George H Doran, 1926) [first appeared 2 October-? 1925 The Yellow Magazine as "The City Under the Sea": hb/]
- The Chank Shell: A Tropical Romance of Love and Treasure (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1930) [hb/]
- The Island of Lost Women (Chicago, Illinois: Sears Publishing, 1930) [vt of the above: hb/]
- The Sunstone (London: Hutchinson and Compay, 1936) [hb/]
- The Story of My Village (London: Hutchinson and Compay, 1947) [hb/]
collections
- Men, Women, and Beasts (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1922) [coll: hb/]
- The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1934) [coll: hb/]
links
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