Since this is a working manuscript, it shows more revision as Phillpotts worked through his text. Phillpotts sent this letter to his friend M. Buxton Forman, presenting him with the working manuscript of His Brother's Keeper. Forman was a literary scholar as well as a collector of Phillpotts memorabilia and first editions. Choose an Author. Stevenson William M. Thackeray Douglas Thayer G. Whitney Close. Holograph working manuscript of His Brother's Keeper , Holograph letter to M. Buxton Forman, 28 March It has been suggested that originally Eden Phillpotts only intended there to be fourteen books in his cycle but once having got the bit between his teeth he actually wrote eighteen, the titles of which are shown below along with their publication dates: Each novel was set around a different part of Dartmoor and relates the trials and tribulations of ordinary Dartmoor folk along with wonderful descriptions of the various events and their moorland settings.
Many of the characters are based upon the real life people he met whilst visiting the moor along with their various trades, occupations and traditions. It was whilst living in Torquay that Phillpotts became acquainted with Agatha Christie and was to become, in her early career, a mentor.
It was also around that Phillpotts began using the pseudonym of Harrington Hext, a name he would continue with until On the 17th of October , much to the amazement of the local press, Eden had secretly married his second wife Lucy Robina Webb. Such was the secrecy of the marriage that there were no decorations or the usual confetti, no best man or bridesmaids and the bride wore simple clothes. By the last of his Dartmoor Cycle was published but his work was by no means finished.
All in all it is estimated that Eden Phillpotts had books, articles, plays etc published throughout his career. Lifted here by the toil of a departed race, their mystery is hidden, their secret is shrouded perhaps for ever; yet those best skilled in prehistoric story judge that they stand for ceremonial, and suspect that within these circles the dead were brought for final rites of fire before they sank into their urns, to be deposited far from the homes of the living.
Poignant terror of the departed belonged as a large factor to primeval superstition, and the monolith and menhir, cairn and its kist, lie on mountain tops or hollowed hills remote from the haunts of the quick.
Their ossuaries were haunted, and primal man feared his ghosts, even as present men love them. Viewed on a day of late August against the purple background of Great Mis Tor, the Long Stones glimmered under sunshine and lacked much of that mystic and foreboding air that oftentimes hung over them at hours of fleeting mist, in morning and evening twighlights, or during the darkness of night and storm.
Scarcely a cloud lower than the dreaming sirri of the firmament dimmed the September blue; the air danced along the immense planes of the Moor; cattle roamed far off, yet their frequent presence within the circle was manifest, for upon more than one of the old stones might be seen flecks of red, black and dun hair from the wandering herds that here are sometimes gathered to ruminate and rub their hides against granite.
It had witnessed events that living man may never learn. Considering that this was published in , Phillpotts had a remarkable understanding of the archaeological thinking of the time. But even more evocative is how he describes the flecks of cattle hair caught on the rough granite stones. This small detail can only come from someone that has actually visited a stone circle and inspected it closely, then more to the point remembered it. Throughout his life, Eden Phillpotts always preferred to avoid the spotlight and quietly get on with his career, some describe him as a recluse and give this the reason for so little being known of his life.
However, there may well have been a reason for his desire for privacy. In his daughter Adelaide disclosed in an interview with Professor Dayananda that her father had allegedly sexually abused her from the age of about six or seven right up until the time her married his second wife in This revelation, if true, certainly put the man in a different light and some will say that there are hints of this deviant behaviour in many of his works?
The most notable Scientific Romances belong to a later and very different phase of his work: the excellent Saurus , in which a reptilian Alien , brought to Earth by an Asteroid as an egg, hatches into an objective observer who comments upon contemporary society and the human condition; The Fall of the House of Heron , a study of an amoral atomic scientist; and Address Unknown which, featuring a less attractive intruder, challenges the assumption presented in Saurus that an alien observer could pass meaningful judgment — his Communication device being Faster Than Light beams — upon human affairs, or in his case offer plausible Uplift for the human race as we enter perilous times.
Though most of his work is marginal to sf, these three novels are integral contributions to the British Scientific Romance. Home About us Random Contact Donate.
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