All-fellows: Seven legends of lower redemption with insets in verse

by Laurence Housman

All-fellows - Seven legends of lower redemption with insets in verse is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1896. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

English playwright, writer, and illustrator Laurence Housman, younger brother of the classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman and the writer Clemence Housman

In 1871, their mother died, and their father remarried a cousin. After education at Bromsgrove School, Laurence went with Clemence to study art at the Lambeth School of Art and the Royal College of Arts in London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurenc...

Reviews

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 4 out of 5]

A curious and apparently largely forgotten piece of late Victorian supernatural fiction, "All-Fellows" contains seven stories, each with a matching poem. Frankly, I found the poetry rather forgettable, but the stories were interesting. Each was Christian in nature and built around the theme of redemption, as the title suggests.

These are probably a bit preachy for a lot of modern audiences but I found their dark sentimentality, reminiscent of the short fiction of Oscar Wilde, intriguing. A fisherman tries to redeem the souls of his lover and unborn child, lost at sea, a St. Francis-like hermit faces a moral dilemma when his illegitamate son wants to become a hunter, and Satan himself puts a terrible curse on a young boy king.

The standout of the collection for me was the final story, "When Pan Was Dead", probably because it is more morally ambiguous and less didactic than the preceding tales. The story concerns the conflict between a female nature spirit, a "woodling", and a convent of nuns. It is a rather beautiful tale of conflict between Paganism and Christianity that manages not to demonise either side. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves obscure late-nineteenth century fantasy.