Borlase's Shrieking Skull volume development

The first story of James Skipp Borlase's that I'd found was "A Bride from the Dead: The Tale of a Dreadful Christmas Wedding" (1899), back in January 2020. That year, though, the Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories became a collection of North American stories and poems, so it was never in consideration - though I had liked it.

As I continued to search for more Christmas ghost stories, the first of his that really caught my attention and the editor's was "The Spectre Horseman: or, Haunted Wye-Coller Hall: A Christmas Story" (1903), in March 2021. A particularly Gothic passage marked it as something fit for the VBVCGS series. "The Dead Hand" and "The Wicked Lady Howard" ended up surpassing it as among our favorites from his work, making it into volume five of Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, which returned the series to the British Isles. "The Shrieking Skull" was in the top three, and just narrowly missed being included.

By June 2021 I'd found enough stories of his that I'd noted "a small book featuring just James Skipp Borlase’s Christmas ghost historical fiction could be done." By August, editor James Jenkins agreed, "It's easily enough for a book -- it really might be a good idea, in lieu of a volume 6."

Small! In retrospect, that seems funny. Borlase was a prolific writer, and I just kept finding more. Ultimately, not all of his Christmas stories would fit in one volume - and even post-proof acceptance I've still kept finding more.

Does that mean there will be a second Borlase volume? Maybe - though the majority of the remaining Christmas stories are more of the historical or foreign adventure type than Christmas ghost stories by any definition, though there are still some of those too.

It's also possible that some of the titles of his that I've learned of will remain elusive. A few had been printed in a newspaper's Christmas supplements, and they're not among what has been made available online by the British Library, and one archive I've contacted doesn't believe they have them. Those particular supplements were either one folded sheet of four additional pages inserted into regular issues, or possibly had been a completely separate Christmas edition.

If they didn't survive, why might that have been the case? If the supplement didn't go into all editions, it could be rarer, for one thing. If it had illustrations, people might have cut them up to display those as artwork, or to scrapbook. It's hard to say for sure. Just have to try contacting more archives that might be likely to have them, if they do still exist.