the inevitable late findings

There's probably a "Murphy's Law"-like name for it: one always finds something after the proofs have been approved.

Fortunately, in the case of James Skipp Borlase and The Shrieking Skull & Other Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories , there hasn't been anything terribly major.

One of the stories that was included in the volume was “Twelve Miles Broad.” The Australian Journal, Dec. 1885, 187-188. The obscure title is explained within the story. The December 1885 publication and reference within the story to Boxing Day both marked it as a Christmas story,

I belatedly found an earlier publication that pointed to a still earlier one, and its title, aside from making its meaning clear, stated the Christmas connection explicitly:

"A Christmas Fire Twelve Miles Broad: A Warm Story for Cold Weather." Southern Times and Dorset County Herald. March 6, 1885: 3 cols 3-4. [Crediting Home Chimes.]

Presumably the story was in a December 1884 issue of Home Chimes, possibly a special Christmas number. Holdings of the 1884 first volume of that London Journal, are rare. From WorldCat, it appears aso though only the British Library might have it. I can, and probably will, order a scan from them, but turnaround time for that can vary widely. Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, there were long periods of time when they weren't taking orders at all.

I don't particularly expect the text of the story to vary at all, since the Australian Journal probably copied it directly, apart from the title. However, it would be nice to be sure, and to know if Home Chimes had the longer title, or if the Southern Times and Dorset County Herald had created that.

One also wonders whether Borlase had any stories in Home Chimes for any earlier months of 1884. AustLit and Phil Stephensen-Payne's fiction indices at philsp.com have the most extensive bibliographies for Borlase, but even they are far from complete - the former has just fifty-three entries.

For my own reference I'd worked up a bibliography for him and it currently stands at 269 entries. However, a number of his pieces were republished with new titles, sometimes more than once. "Ich Dien; or, For the Glory of Wales," for example, also appeared as "Love Stronger Than Death." Another had at least six different titles. I'd still expect the total to be over 250 distinct works, though. I've added a column to the spreadsheet in which I was tracking them in which to enter first lines in order to make that calculation more exact.

Another fairly minor matter had to do with something addressed in the introduction, Borlase's relationship with humor. I'd cited some comic recitations he'd done while living in Australia, and his brief editorship of Fun, or, The Tasmanian Charivari. I subsequently found he'd had a set of stories in England that had been teased by the newspaper carrying it as "bright, amusing tales" and "a most diverting series!" and as "a series of humourous stories by that popular writer, J. S. Borlase." It's further circumstantial evidence in favor of an argument for his authorship of an earlier humorous story, but without making it any more decisive.