Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson Volume 4: The Night Land & Other Romances [Hardcover]

William Hope Hodgson (Author), Jason Van Hollander (Author)

Book Description

Series: Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson | Publication Date: January 24, 2006

The fourth of a five volume set collecting all of Hodgson's published fiction. Each volume contains one of Hodgson's novels, along with a selection of thematically-linked short fiction. Introduction by Jeremy Lassen The Night Land # The Captain of the Onion Boat # Smugglers # The Girl with the Grey Eyes # Kind, Kind and Gentle Is She # A Timely Escape A Note On The Texts

Product Details

• Hardcover: 530 pages
• Publisher: Night Shade Books (January 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892389428
• ISBN-13: 978-1892389428
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, January 20, 2007

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This review is from: Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson Volume 4: The Night Land & Other Romances (Hardcover)

The Night Land is Hodgson's most complex work and not to everyone's taste. It is though an important foundation of fantasy literature much as Dunsany's King of Elfland's daughter is. The tragedy of Hodgson is that he died at tender age in the trenches of the first world war and his gift of writing was taken from us.
These books are my favourite not only for their content but the way in which the publishers have presented them. The Amazon picture does not give full justice to them - they are full size harcovers with blue faux? leather boards, no dustjacket, each book has a wonderful silver gilt lithograph? imprinted into the covers, illustrated within by Jason Van Hollander. Flat spine with silver compass floret and vol no , title , author , publisher. Back cover has silver guilt Hodgson portrait and occult border. Section sewn pages add to durability and I would imagine acid free paper.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A flawed masterpiece, March 20, 2009

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Krypter (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson Volume 4: The Night Land & Other Romances (Hardcover)

The works of William Hope Hodgson are mostly forgotten, but have no doubt that he strongly influenced both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, two literary names that put a heavy imprint on 20th c. horror literature. The Night Land is Hodgson's masterpiece, written in a deliberately archaic synthetic language without a single line of dialogue which presents to us a vision of such titanic eschatological force that it will burn itself into your mind for the rest of your life.

Imagine that you've found your true love; your heart's desire; your soul-mate. Now imagine that you are thrust forward in time a hundred million years, to the end of the world, when the entire Earth is shrouded by unimaginable darkness. A world ruled by monsters and necromantic gods, where the last few millions of humanity shiver in their refuge, a pyramidal arcology at the tip of the world. Now imagine that your true love is there...but in another arcology, and you must travel the Night Land to save her.

This is Hodgson's tribute to horror, and to love. For it should be strongly noted that this is a Romance, in a classic Victorian style, and not a horror or fantasy novel as such. And this is where the flaw lies, for Hodgson was a romantic and Victorian gentlemen, and his ideas may be intensely grating to modern readers. In fact, the romance is at times so saccharine and bloated that it may force you to put down the book. Nevertheless, persevere, because this is a novel that leaves an indelible mark, and its virtues, though considered hackneyed and misogynistic in modern times, still have a noble bearing that is worth appraising.

If you liked this book but prefer more horror and less love-dovey, try The House on the Borderland, Hodgson's other great and spooky novella.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Night Land and Other Romances, March 16, 2008

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Gregory D. Clark "Stirling Rose" (Clearwater, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson Volume 4: The Night Land & Other Romances (Hardcover)

I became a William Hope Hodgson fan when I read "the Boats of the Glen Carrig" some 8 or 9 nine years ago. It was one of a number of sea terror/ghost stories buried in a book of collected fiction containing other stories from several authors. I gave that book to my brother for the specific reason that he read that particular story as I knew he would like it, which he did. Anyhow the book became lost before I could retrieve it but the memory of that story and how it pulled me down the rabbit hole never faded.

Years later when I decided to write my own fantastic fiction it came to mind and re-inspired me. Although I only recalled the name of the title - not the author - it was quickly recaptured with a google search that ultimately led me to Amazon, and hence to The Night Land.

It was in the midst of reading The Night Land that I began writing, inspired as I was by this towering classic. I was as much attracted to the depths of his descriptions as I was by my intrique, my curiousity to decipher his writing style (READER BEWARE: Hodgson used an adaptive, not entirely consistent archaic English - I was drawn to it as I was required to read and understand the decisions from several 16th and 17th century cases as part of my legal education, and actually like them).

The Night Land drew me even deeper into the rabbit hole, and some would say I have never really returned.