H. Russell Wakefield - Work

Work

Wakefield's ghost stories were published in several collections during the course of his lengthy writing career: They Return at Evening (1928), Old Man's Beard: Fifteen Disturbing Tales (1929), Imagine a Man in a Box (1931), Ghost Stories (1932), A Ghostly Company (1935), The Clock Strikes Twelve: Tales of the Supernatural (1940), and Strayers from Sheol (1961). In 1946, August Derleth's Arkham House issued an expanded version of The Clock Strikes Twelve for the U.S. market; they were also the publishers of Strayers from Sheol. In 1978, John Murray published The Best Ghost Stories of H. Russell Wakefield, edited by Richard Dalby, which spanned Wakefield's career and featured some previously uncollected tales. A series of collections comprising his complete output of published ghost stories was produced in the 1990s by Ash-Tree Press in limited editions that quickly went out of print. Ash-Tree also published a volume of previously unpublished stories, Reunion at Dawn and Other Uncollected Ghost Stories, in 2000.

Wakefield's supernatural fiction was strongly influenced by the work of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood.

"The Red Lodge", "The Thirteenth Hole at Duncaster", "Blind Man's Buff", "‘Look Up There!’" and "‘He Cometh and He Passeth By!’" are among his most widely anthologised tales.

Wakefield's atmospheric work in the field has been frequently compared to that of M. R. James. Many critics consider him one of the great masters of the supernatural horror tale. August Derleth called him "the last major representative of a ghost story tradition that began with Sheridan Le Fanu and reached its peak with Montague Rhodes James". John Betjeman noted, "M. R. James is the greatest master of the ghost story. Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu and H. Russell Wakefield are equal seconds." M. R. James was slightly more reserved in his praise, calling They Return at Evening "a mixed bag, from which I should remove one or two that leave a nasty taste".

Wakefield is best known for his ghost stories, but he produced work outside the field. He was greatly interested in the criminal mind and wrote two non-fiction criminology studies, The Green Bicycle Case (1930) (about a 1919 death in Leicestershire) and Landru: The French Bluebeard (1936). He also wrote three detective novels: Hearken to the Evidence (1933), Belt of Suspicion (1936) and Hostess of Death (1938).

In 1968, BBC Television produced a dramatization of Wakefield's supernatural story "The Triumph of Death", starring Claire Bloom.

Criticism of Wakefield's work is scattered and uncollected. The majority of it exists in reprints of his collections, in brief articles in reference books, and in surveys such as Jack Sullivan's Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood (1978). Appraisals can be found in Supernatural Fiction Writers (Scribners, 1985), the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers (St. James Press, 1998), and Supernatural Literature of the World (Greenwood Press, 2005).