Three Macabre Stories
York Beach, Maine: The Teitan Press, 2010. Revised Edition. Limited to 666 copies, of which this is number 360. Octavo, xxxii, 64 pages, publisher's original color pictorial dust jacket. Publisher's original gilt-lettered black cloth-covered boards. Illustrated in black-and-white. Dust jacket now in a protective mylar sleeve. A collection of the early weird fiction of Rosaleen Norton (1917–1979), the Australian artist and occultist later notorious as the “Witch of Kings Cross.” The three title stories were originally published in Smith’s Weekly in 1934, while Norton was still in her teens, and reveal at an early date the macabre, fantastic, and occult preoccupations that would characterize much of her later artistic work. First collected in a very limited letterpress edition in 1996, the stories are accompanied here by two previously unpublished tales by Norton’s husband, Beresford Conroy, to which Norton is believed to have contributed, together with reproductions of her grotesque drawings and early comic illustrations. With a revised introduction and new foreword by Keith Richmond. An uncommon gathering of Australian weird fiction and an important record of Norton’s literary work preceding her emergence as one of the more singular figures in twentieth-century occult art. In near fine condition. Item #588
Price: $130.00