Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners: Including Percy Wallingford, The Camel, Mr. Pidger, Count Omega, The Romance of a Nose, Far from the Madding War

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Turtle Point Press and Helen Marx Books, 1999 - Fiction - 434 pages

In his delightful Collected Tales and Fantasies, the legendary eccentric English writer and composer Lord Berners (1883-1950) maintains a quiet grace, razor-sharp wit and unique sense of the absurd that is entirely sui generis. Berners offers an unforgettable cast of characters in these gem-like works of short fiction collected here. In "Far from the Madding War," set in Oxford during wartime, the heroine, Emmeline Pocock, looks "like a nymph in one of the less licentious pictures of Fragonard, " while in "Count Omega" we read of composer Emanuel Smith (based on William Walton), who becomes infatuated with a young giantess named Madame Gloria, who is guarded by a jealous millionaire's eunuch, and whose virtuosity on trombone seems to offer the perfect climax to the symphony Smith is composing. In "The Camel," a baroque Victorian tale with utterly macabre undertones, a humped quadruped takes a Fancy for a vicar's wife, while in "The Romance of the Nose," Cleopatra herself appears. And these are only some of the fanciful creations that populate these literary treasures!

From inside the book

Contents

An Early Visitor
55
The First Adventure
62
TallyHo
69
Copyright

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