Blue cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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A Prisoner in Fairyland is a curious, unusual, puzzling type of book written by Algernon Blackwood.

Though recognized primarily as a writer of ‘weird’ horror fiction for adults, Algernon Blackwood also wrote a number of delightful tales for children and young adults. A Prisoner in Fairyland is an engaging and imaginative romp through a mystical dimension that served as the basis for the popular children’s play The Starlight Express.

Reviews:

— As a fan of fantasy fiction, I enjoyed reading this Victorian/Edwardian gem that inspired Elgar to write the “Starlight Express” Music (distinct from the totally different modern Starlight Express musical). I normally read very quickly. With this text there is such a richness in the description and the vocabulary that I took my time and thus gained more enjoyment out of it. The story does build gradually, so take your time. However, the magic and the underlying message are positive and uplifting and the story comes to an end too soon.

— A wonderful mystical book by a uniquely gifted but neglected author whose extraordinary life is celebrated in Mike Ashley’s definitive biography of Blackwood, Starlight Man. Blackwood became television’s first storyteller but for some reason is always overlooked in all BBC retrospectives.

Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, “His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s” and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) “may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century”.

Blackwood was born in Shooter’s Hill (now part of south-east London, then part of north-west Kent). Between 1871 and 1880, he lived at Crayford Manor House, Crayford and he was educated at Wellington College. His father, Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood, was a Post Office administrator; his mother, Harriet Dobbs, was the widow of the 6th Duke of Manchester.  According to Peter Penzoldt, his father, “though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas.” After he read the work of a Hindu sage left behind at his parents’ house, he developed an interest in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies. Blackwood had a varied career, working as a dairy farmer in Canada, where he also operated a hotel for six months, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, bartender, model, journalist for The New York Times, private secretary, businessman, and violin teacher. During his time in Canada, he also became one of the founding members of Toronto Theosophical Society in February of 1891.

Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children’s books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.

Jack Sullivan stated that “Blackwood’s life parallels his work more neatly than perhaps that of any other ghost story writer. Like his lonely but fundamentally optimistic protagonists, he was a combination of mystic and outdoorsman; when he wasn’t steeping himself in occultism, including Rosicrucianism, or Buddhism he was likely to be skiing or mountain climbing.” Blackwood was a member of one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as was his contemporary Arthur Machen. Cabalistic themes influence his novel The Human Chord.

His two best-known stories are probably “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller’s sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. In correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Blackwood wrote,

My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness…. Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extraordinary powers etc., and the word “supernatural” seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A “change” in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.