Tuesday, December 01, 2020

A Voyage to Arcturus and Beyond: David Lindsay's Visionary Imagination 9 December 2020


 

This year marks the centenary of the publication of the extraordinary metaphysical fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus, the first book by the relatively neglected Scottish author David Lindsay (1876-1945). The novel counts Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, Alan Moore and Nina Allan among its admirers.

To celebrate the centenary of this extraordinary book, I am helping organise an event that will take place on 9 December via the website of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, on Zoom. This will run from 1300-1800 (UK time), and will feature presentations on not just A Voyage to Arcturus, but also Lindsay's other novels, The Haunted WomanThe Violet AppleDevil's Tor, and The Witch. Composer David Power will talk about writing Lindsay-inspired music, and I will be showing a preview of the film I have made about Lindsay's work. 

Tickets are available on a pay-what-you-like basis. More info and tickets here.

Pictured: the first copy of A Voyage to Arcturus I ever bought, the 1986 Allison & Busby edition. Now starting to fall apart... One of the better cover designs, showing John Brett's The Glacier of Rosenlaui, but it uses the 1963 copyedited text, prepared for the book's first U.S. publication. If you want to get a copy of the book, the new Bookship edition is possibly the most textually accurate. You can get it as a FREE EBOOK, or as a NICE HARDBACK - both available here.