Dark Angels Note 156
Dearest Friends
After our summer break, welcome back to our weekly Friday Note.
Observing
Today marks the birthday of English writer W. W. Jacobs (8 September 1863 – 1 September 1943).
Willian Wymark Jacobs started his writing career around a full-time clerical job at The Post Office Savings Bank. Short stories and sketches became the antidote to the everyday ennui of his job and he began contributing to their internal comms publication, Blackfriars Magazine.
Though a comic writer, it is for his horror that he is most well-known. Most famously The Monkey’s Paw, a superstitious tale of a mummified paw that has the power to grant wishes. The tale has been reproduced in film, theatre and TV, including an episode of The Simpsons, and retold in Stephen King’s novel Pet Semetary.
ReadingThis spine-chilling fiction was first published in 1902 and became an enduring classic of supernatural storytelling.
Read: The Monkey’s Paw, revisited on The London Magazine.
Writing
British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” Can you write about a time when you – or a character – overcame a superstitious fear to arrive at a place of wisdom, or at least the beginnings of some wisdom? We’d love to see whatever you come up with.
And while we’re on the subject of fear, congratulations to Dark Angels alumna Kate Van Der Borgh. Publishers Fourth Estate have just snapped up her debut novel, "And He Shall Appear". It's a dark academic thriller that opens with "one of the most chilling scenes I’ve ever encountered in a novel”, according to their editorial director, Katie Bowden. It’s out in Autumn 2024.