Tom Enderby has been left a widower in early middle age, and should be seen as highly eligible for a second marriage. But it would seem that his late wife is unhappy at the prospect of him moving on...
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:
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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:22 The Death Mask
00:29:44 Credits, thanks and further listening
Henrietta Dorothy Everett, nee Huskisson (1851-1923) was born in Gillingham, Kent. She married Isaac Edward Everett in 1869, when she was 18, but it was not until more than a quarter of a century later that she took up writing, at the age of 44. Between 1896 and 1920 she produced a number of highly popular books and short stories, including historical novels as well as works of fantasy and the supernatural, and nascent science fiction, exploring themes such as possession, vampirism and spiritualism.
Regular listeners will notice that the title card for this story doesn't include the usual portrait of the author: I have not been able to find one on this occasion. Indeed, very little information is known about H. D. Everett's personal life and her name is little remembered today despite the popularity of her fiction with contemporary readers. For much of her career she published her novels under the pen name "Theo Douglas"; it was not until 1910 that her real identity became known, and she occasionally published later works under her own name while also continuing to use the Douglas pseudonym. She died in Derbyshire in 1923, at the age of 72. Her husband had pre-deceased her, but she was survived by at least one son, Isaac Arthur Huskisson Everett.
'The Death-Mask' first appeared in 1920, the title story in 'The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts', a collection of short stories published under the name H. D. Everett. (Previous story collections had been published credited to "Theo Douglas.") M. R. James singled out the volume in his 1929 essay 'Some Remarks on Ghost Stories', noting that it contained "some excellently conceived stories." Despite this praise, the volume remained out of print for many decades until it was re-published in the 1990s.
The title card image is a detail from an untitled 1897 painting by the Polish artist Władysław Ślewiński (1856-1918).
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2023
1 авг 2024
