British Library Tales of the Weird: The Human Chord

One of the cornerstones of early twentieth-century Weird fiction, exploring the cosmic, the sublime and the terrifying with literary and fast-paced flair. A visionary 1910 novel from one of Britain’s most influential and inspired Weird writers, lost for much of the last century.

When Robert Spinrobin, drifting through life in a daydream, answers a newspaper ad asking for an imaginative tenor with a grasp of ancient languages, he soon finds himself travelling to rural Wales and the home of ex-clergyman, Philip Skale. Here Skale, the housekeeper Mrs. Mawle and her niece, Miriam, have been pursuing a new science, harnessing sound to discover the true names of people – and recording the uncanny phenomena and transformations that this naming ritual brings in the subject.

With possibilities of mind-melding and sublime spiritual awakenings already documented, it is not long before Skale pivots towards a grander master plan to intone a forbidden name beyond the preserve of humanity – while a gathering storm of disastrous cosmic consequences threatens to break.

First published in 1910 but lost for most of the twentieth century, Blackwood’s tour-de-force novel is long overdue rediscovery.