Grey Maiden, the story of a sword through the ages by Arthur D. Howden Smith (1929)

Image courtesy of Pulpflakes

Arthur D. Howden Smith (1887-1945) was a writer and journalist, who spent a year fighting against the Ottoman Empire alongside Macedonian revolutionaries and wrote adventure stories for Pulp Magazines. He even wrote a prequel to Stevenson's Treasure Island, with the approval of his estate.

Grey Maiden is a collection of stories about the sword as it goes from owner to owner down the centuries. These stories were originally published in Adventure magazine, and they all stand indepentantly. The stories include a type of lost race story of the survival of the Sixth Legion in Britain after the end of Roman rule, the story of vengeane for the theft of rightfully inherited property in Iceland or how the sword was acquired by a warlord of Muhammad.

Oddly enough, the very first story, The Forging, was not published in the original 1929 edition which is in the public domain today. It is utterly baffling why they would omit the story, especially as the Egyptian origin of the sword is still refferenced in several of the other stories. Luckil Black Mask Magazine has posted the story online and so it can be accessed below.

http://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/adventure_01.html

There is also a 2014 paperback edition from Atlus Press called Grey Maiden: The Story of a Sword Through the Ages, The Complete Saga.

Either way I highly recommend this book, it is one of a handful of titles I would rank as exceptional.

Osru a Tale of many incarnations, the history of the soul (1910) by Justin Sterns

Once again I am at a loss what to say about the author of a book. Justin Sterns seems to have ever only published one book. There is no biographical information to be found out about him, not even his date of birth.

The book is interesting though and worthy of a mention. It chronicles certain passages of the various lives of a soul. It works more effectively as a conte cruel then a lecture about karma, as there is only one incarnation wherein the soul commits any evil, where it happens to be Nero. The rest are rather unpleasant, from throwing a drugged woman ontop of a funerary pyre against her will, to a man rotting in a dungeon to several decades, being made the brood mare of a slavery plantation, etc. It is well written stuff either way and worthy to look up.

The only piece of trivia I can find out is that there seems to have been a drama based on the book called "Every-Soul" by A.L.Pollock. That person too appears to be an enigma.

A Modern Wizard by Rodrigues Ottolengui (1894)

Rodrigues Ottolengui (1861-1937)  was a somewhat famous pioneer in the art of inflicting suffering on others and still getting paid for it, specifically being a dentist. Apart from spending his time perfecting the root cannal and shinning x-rays inside of people's mouths, and an occupation with entomology, Ottolengui wrote a few work of criminal fiction, which appeared in book form between 1892 and 1896. He published no more fiction afterwards, beyond a story in a magazine here and there, and as Anthony Boucher said he "gave up the sleuth for the tooth".

A Modern Wizard is his third book and it seems to be his most interesting work. It has a main character who likes to hypnotise people and be brutish and commanding without considering other people's feelings, always getting what he wants. The first third of the book deals with Dr. Medjora on trial for the murder of his wife, and Ottolengui grinds the plot to a halt to showcase the proceedings in numbing detail, with nearly the entire cross-examination of all witnesses and the complete closing speech of the defense and Attorney, repeating the same points over and over again.

The second part, years later after Dr. Medjora was acquited, deals with the Doctor adopting Leon, a farm boy who, it turns out, is his son with his first wife. The novel seems to be building up Leon confronting the Doctor, who tries to hypnotise him and make him assimilate information at rapid rate for his own purpose, and also forces him and a girl in the neighbourhood to fall in love through hypnotism, all while talking about how he is a direct descendant of the God Aesculapius, who was a North American native wise-man venerated as a god before the world flood, leading Leon to the pyramid built by Aesculapius which is below Medjora's house. All this seems to build up some kind of conflict but then the novel just sort of ends with Medjora intentionally driving himself insane to prevent a detective from dragging his name through court after the suspicious and largely unexplained coincidental death of his second wife. Leon, despite how much time is devoted to him, really ends up doing nothing and it seems like Ottolengui suddenly ended the novel for reasons beyond his control.

Rather disappointing considering the potential of the Lost-race element on display here, it's a shame it ends up so marginal.