Helen Simpson 
The Outcast and The Rite 
Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-38

The Australian novelist and playwright Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940) published many supernatural short stories. This new edition selects the best of her unsettling writing, adding some little-known stories to her 1925 collection The Baseless Fabric (1925). Featured stories include:
• ‘An Experiment of the Dead’, in which a visitor comes to visit a woman in the condemned cell.
• ‘Good Company’, in which a traveller in Italy becomes temporarily possessed of a hitchhiker in her mind.
• ‘Grey Sand and White Sand’ is the horrifying story of a landscape artist who sees and paints a different view.
• ‘The Outcast’, in which a soldier left for dead in the War takes his revenge on his village.
• ‘The Rite’, in which a discontented woman enters a wood, and emerges transformed.
Helen de Guerry Simpson was born in Sydney, New South Wales, and studied at Oxford. Her novel Boomerang won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 1932. She died from cancer in 1940. Her close friend, the novelist Margaret Kennedy, took charge of Simpson’s daughter Clemence during the war while Simpson was in her last illness. Clemence and Simpson both feature in Kennedy’s wartime memoir, Where Stands A Winged Sentry, also published by Handheld Press.
The Introduction is by Melissa Edmundson, the leading scholar of women’s Weird fiction and supernatural writing from the early 20th century.

Despre autor

Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940) was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Edward Percy Simpson and Anne de Lauret Simpson. She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rose Bay and at Abbotsleigh, Wahroonga. In 1914, she travelled to France to continue her studies. After her arrival in England, she attended the University of Oxford, reading French from 1916-1917. In 1918, she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (popularly known as the Wrens) and worked as a senior section officer specializing in decoding. In 1919, Simpson returned to Oxford to study music and while there also became interested in theatre, eventually founding the Oxford Women’s Dramatic Society, as well as publishing several plays. Her studies ended in 1921 when she broke university regulations which prohibited male and female students from acting together. In 1927, she married the surgeon Sir Denis John Browne. Her first novel, Acquittal, was published in 1925. One of her most successful works, Boomerang, an historical fiction novel, was published in 1932 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Simpson published two historical biographies, The Spanish Marriage (1933) and Henry VIII (1934), and a book on household management, The Happy Housewife (1934). She collaborated with Clemence Dane on the novels, Enter Sir John (1929), Printer’s Devil (1930) and Re-enter Sir John (1932). Another novel, Under Capricorn (1937) was adapted into a 1949 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1939, Simpson was chosen as a parliamentary candidate by the Isle of Wight Liberal Association but her political career was cut short by illness and her death the following year.
Her close friend, the novelist Margaret Kennedy, took charge of Simpson’s daughter Clemence during the war while Simpson was in her last illness. Clemence features in Kennedy’s wartikme memoir, Where Stands A Winged Sentry, also published by Handheld Press.