Author Onions Oliver [pseud.]

e novella The Beckoning Fair One, widely regarded as one of the best in the genre of horror fiction, especially psychological horror. On the surface, this is a conventional haunted house story: an unsuccessful writer moves into rooms in an otherwise empty house, in the hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. The story can be read as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious and possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the sufferer's point of view. The precise description of the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind is terrifying in either case. Another theme, shared with others of Onions' stories, is a connection between creativity and insanity; in this view, the artist is in danger of withdrawing from the world altogether and losing himself in his creation. Onions was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his 1946 novel Poor Man's Tapestry. NB. Neither of the above two collected editions is complete; the second printing of the latter includes the previously unknown tale 'Tragic Casements' subsequent to its discovery by the small press publisher 'The Haunted River' (who had published it as an annotated booklet).