A Bit About "The Ash-tree"

Tangled web, and all that.

Something About Mistaken Identity

What’s in a name?

Something About Charles Merchant

It just keeps rolling along....

Something About #MailPouchBarns

Lewis Barnavelt spotted Mail Pouch brand tobacco signs on the sides of barns along the road between New Zebedee and Cristobal (The Specter from the Magician's Museum; 90). Between 1890 and 1992, the West Virginia Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco Company paid farmers to allow advertisements to be painted on their barns within view of roadways; usually hand-painted in black or red with yellow or white capital lettering that read “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco Treat Yourself to the Best.” At the height of the program in the early 1960s, there were about 20,000 Mail Pouch barns spread across 22 states.

Who's Who: C. S. Forester

Rose Rita had just begun reading a book by this author about a naval captain during the Napoleonic wars [The Specter from the Magician's Museum; 35].  Lewis later reads a rousing sea adventure by the same author [The Tower at the End of the World; 78].

Bid Him Bring His Pen And Inkhorn To Auction

Last week the Goreyana blog posted this bit of news for collectors:

On Thursday January 23rd, Swann Auction Galleries in New York City is having its second 20th Century Illustration Auction. Previews begin Friday January 17th. This auction includes a nice selection of original artwork by Edward "Bill" Gorey. Of special interest are four full color paintings by Mr. Gorey created as dust jacket designs the John Bellairs book series.

BiblioFile: Luis Barnavelt I Widmo Z Muzeum Magii

We’re about due for another stirring of the pot that is the Polish editions of the Lewis Barnavelt series. Yes, we’re going about these very gradually because too much głupota tends to wear us (and our readers) down.

Goreyana: The Specter from the Magician's Museum

Notes from Goreyana about The Specter from the Magician's Museum:

How Much Marshall?

I recently thumbed through The Figure in the Shadows and came across a few memorable excerpts of Lewis happily walking along Main Street, seeing a fountain at the traffic circle, and later encountering the titular figure outside of a Masonic Temple. These are memorable scenes, yes, and ones with a clear setting.

Something About the Fox Sisters

Commentary from Ghost Augustine about the Fox Sisters, briefly mentioned in The Specter from the Magician's Museum:

Something About a Magician Disillusioned

If there's one thing we learned from The Specter of the Magician's Museum it's the men and women who practiced stage magic came up with some interesting stage names. Much of Specter has its roots in the American Museum of Magic in Marshall as well as Colon, the magic capital of Michigan. There are more names buried out in Colon's Lakeside Cemetery, too. The Magnificent Fraud. The Amazing Conklins. The Conjuring Humorist.  America's Greatest Pickpocket. You get the idea.

Ion Zwitter shares the story of one such magician, The Great Lumache:

Memoriam: Elaine Lund

Elaine Lund passed away May 1, 2006.  Elaine (b. 1926) along with her late husband, Bob (1925-1995), founded the Marshall, Michigan landmark, the American Museum of Magic, in 1978.

The Lunds were dedicates of Brad Strickland's The Specter from the Magician's Museum, in which Lewis and Rose Rita visit a similar museum in New Zebedee and stumble upon spells, scrolls, and spiders.

Book Alert: Le Spectre du Musée

The French edition of the The Specter from the Magician's Museum, with cover art by Lalex, is to be published next January. This is book #8 in the Kévin et les magiciens series.

Book Alert: 魔法博物館の謎

The Japanese edition of the The Specter from the Magician's Museum (loosely translated as Mystery of the magic museum) will be published this November.

Book Alert: Specter and Wrath in Paperback

New Puffin paperbacks by Brad Strickland are now available! Fans can get their mitts on copies The Specter From the Magician's Museum (staring Lewis Barnavelt and his tangled-up-in-a-web friend, Rose Rita) and The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (staring Johnny Dixon and featuring the return of two long-quiet characters, his father and a certain bird-brained-like statue).

Read on, fans!