Blackwood Forest

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Lore & Background

Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (now part of southeast London, then part of northwest Kent). Between 1871 and 1880, he lived at Crayford Manor House, Crayford and was educated at Wellington College. His father, Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, was a Post Office administrator; his mother, Harriet Dobbs, was the widow of the 6th Duke of Manchester. According to Peter Penzoldt, his father, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas". After Algernon read the work of a Hindu sage left behind at his parents' house, he developed an interest in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies. Blackwood had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada, where he also operated a hotel for six months, bartender, model, reporter for The New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher. During his time in Canada, he also became one of the founding members of the Toronto Theosophical Society in February 1891. Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company. Jack Sullivan stated that "Blackwood's life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn't steeping himself in occultism, including Rosicrucianism, or Buddhism he was likely to be skiing or mountain climbing." Blackwood was a member of one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as was his contemporary Arthur Machen. Cabalistic themes influence his novel The Human Chord. His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would often write stories for newspapers at short notice, so that he and his biographers are not sure exactly how many short stories he wrote. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. In correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Blackwood wrote, "My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness.... Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word 'supernatural' seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A 'change' in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know."

In Their Own Story

Blackwood wrote an autobiography of his early years, Episodes Before Thirty (1923), and there is a biography, Starlight Man, by Mike Ashley (ISBN 0-7867-0928-6). Blackwood died after experiencing several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years.

Reader's Guide

Blackwood's bibliography includes novels such as Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909), The Education of Uncle Paul (1909), The Human Chord (1910), The Centaur (1911), A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913), The Extra Day (1915), Julius LeVallon (1916), The Wave (1916), The Promise of Air (1918), The Garden of Survival (1918), The Bright Messenger (1921), Episodes Before Thirty (1923), and Dudley & Gilderoy: A Nonsense (1929). He also wrote children's novels: Sambo and Snitch (1927) and The Fruit Stoners: Being the Adventures of Maria Among the Fruit Stoners (1934). His plays include The Starlight Express (1915), coauthored with Violet Pearn; Karma a reincarnation play in prologue epilogue and three acts (1918), coauthored with Violet Pearn; The Crossing (1920a), coauthored with Bertram Forsyth; Through the Crack (1920), coauthored with Violet Pearn; White Magic (1921), coauthored with Bertram Forsyth; The Halfway House (1921), coauthored with Elaine Ainley; and Max Hensig (1929), coauthored with Frederick Kinsey Peile. His short fiction collections include The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (1906), The Listener and Other Stories (1907), John Silence (1908), The Lost Valley and Other Stories (1910), Pan's Garden: a Volume of Nature Stories (1912), Ten Minute Stories (1914a), Incredible Adventures (1914b), Day and Night Stories (1917), Wolves of God, and Other Fey Stories (1921), Tongues of Fire and Other Sketches (1924), Ancient Sorceries and Other Tales (1927a), The Dance of Death and Other Tales (1927b), Strange Stories (1929), Short Stories of To-Day & Yesterday (1930), The Willows and Other Queer Tales (1932), Shocks (1935), The Tales of Algernon Blackwood (1938), Selected Tales of Algernon Blackwood (1942), Selected Short Stories of Algernon Blackwood (1945), The Doll and One Other (1946), Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (1949), In the Realm of Terror (1957), The Dance of Death and Other Stories (1963), Selected Tales of Algernon Blackwood (1964), Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre (1967), Ancient Sorceries and Other Stories (1968), Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood (1973), The Best Supernatural Tales of Algernon Blackwood (1973), Tales of Terror and Darkness (1977), Tales of the Supernatural (1983), The Magic Mirror (1989), The Complete John Silence Stories (1997), Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories (2002), Algernon Blackwood's Canadian Tales of Terror (2004), Roarings from Further Out: Four Weird Novellas (2020), and The Wendigo and Other Stories (2024).

Did You Know?

• Blackwood was one of the founding members of the Toronto Theosophical Society in February 1891.
• His father, Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, was a Post Office administrator; his mother, Harriet Dobbs, was the widow of the 6th Duke of Manchester.
• Blackwood's two best-known stories are probably 'The Willows' and 'The Wendigo'.
• He wrote an autobiography of his early years titled Episodes Before Thirty (1923).
• His ashes were scattered at Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps by his nephew a few weeks after his cremation.