Subject: David Lindsay book list (LONG)

From: [email-masked] (William D.B. Loos)
Date: 21 Aug 91 07:50:00 GMT

Awhile ago I requested information about David Lindsay, the author of _A
Voyage to Arcturus_ : had he written any other books?  If so, what were they?
And *how* were they?  The summary of responses, plus additions, follows; it
consists of: responders; introduction; bibliography; secondary source bibli-
ography; general (including biographical) information; and separate sections 
on each novel containing such information as is available.  This is more than
just a bald listing of books -- the obscurity of the author and most of his 
work make it difficult to find out anything about him, so for the benefit of
anyone who's interested I've included such other information as I've been able 
to find.  In the sections on the novels I've relied on the experiences of the 
responders where possible.  Nobody seems to have read a couple of them, though,
so in these cases I've included somewhat lengthy quotes from a secondary 
source which I came across after my original post.  Remarks not specifically 
attributed are by myself; editorial comments embedded in remarks by others 
are marked "[WDBL]".

--

Thanks are due to the following responders:

      [email-masked] (Dai)
      [email-masked] (Dave Davis)
      [email-masked] (David Elworthy)
      [email-masked] (Michael Hand)
      [email-masked] (Will Linden)
      [email-masked] (Timothy J Lundgren)
      [email-masked] ("F.LYALL")
      [email-masked] (Carlin Sappenfield)
      [email-masked] (John Whitmore)

--

In my original posting I wrote:

>One day in a bookstore I browsed through a book of the best-SF-novels-of-
>all-time sort.  It had not only _Voyage To Arcturus_ listed as the entry 
>for 1920 but also a second Lindsay novel as the entry for 1922, a novel 
>which apparently was received very coldly.  I think I remember that the 
>second one was also of the fantasy or dream-adventure type.  

Since I didn't remember the name of either the reference work or the second
Lindsay novel, I appealed to the net.  By one of those coincidences, during 
the last few weeks that same reference work was issued in paparback.  It turns 
out that it was _Fantasy: The 100 Best Books_ , by James Cawthorn and Michael 
Moorcock.  Astonishingly, in a list that contains the likes of Swift, Mary 
Shelley, Poe, and William Morris ("pre-SF era") and Lovecraft, Vance, Poul 
Anderson, Tolkien, and Le Guin ("SF-era"), Lindsay is one of a handful who 
made the list twice.  This may be because one of the authors (Cawthorn) has 
a specific affinity for him.  From the Introduction: "To keep abreast of the 
torrent of dragons, unicorns, mages, and moody swords sluicing through the 
bookstores is impossible; ...  An immensely helpful side-effect of the boom 
has been the resurrection of such rarities as Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_, 
_The Haunted Woman_ , and the novels of William Hope Hodgson."  _The Haunted 
Woman_ was the second Lindsay novel which I couldn't remember.

--

Bibliography:

   [Assembled from the responses supplemented by Books in Print and the Gary 
    K. Wolfe reference (see the secondary bibliography below).  Notes about
    what is and isn't in print is based on Books in Print and therefore are 
    *NOT RELIABLE* -- that is, if a book is not listed there it is almost 
    certainly out of print, but if it is it's anybody's guess.  They also 
    have trouble with different authors of the same name.  The entry on David
    Lindsay, for example, contains works by at least three David Lindsay's --
    one is our David Lindsay and the other two are a 15th century Scottish
    poet (whose name is actually spelled Lyndsay) and a late 19th century 
    British aristocrat.  The books listed below are the only ones by the 
    author of _Voyage to Arcturus_.  Also, comments about what's in or out 
    of print apply only to American editions. ]

  A Voyage to Arcturus.  London: Methuen, 1920.  Reprints: London: Gollancz,
    1946, 1963, 1968; New York: Macmillan, 1963; New York: Ballantine, 1968,
    1973 [paperback]; Boston: Gregg Press, 1977 [photographic reprint of 1st
    edition]; New York: Citadel Press, 1985.  The Citadel edition (ISBN 
    0-8065-0944-9) is the only one still in print.  

    Introductions to various editions of _Arcturus_ :

      -- Visiak, E.H.  Gollancz, 1963 edition.  Gary K. Wolfe: "Repeats many of 
        the ideas of Visiak's 1940 essay." [see secondary bibliography below]

      -- Eisley, Loren.  Macmillan, 1963 edition.  Gary K. Wolfe: "This brief
        introduction, reprinted in the Ballantine edition of the novel, is
        sympathetic but misleading, and contains factual errors."  In another
        place he calls it "earnest" but "often erroneous".  The Elflandsson
        Introduction [see below] is also critical of Eisley.

      -- Mensing, Van A.  Gregg Press, 1977 edition.  Gary K. Wolfe: "The most
        complete exposition to date of the debt _Arcturus_ owes to Nietzsche."

      -- Elflandsson, Galad.  "David Lindsay and the Quest for Muspel-fire",
        Introduction to the 1985 Citadel Press edition.
          Timothy J Lundgren writes:  This is a brief biography of Lindsay, 
        and a quick interpretation of _Voyage_. ...  In the Intro, Elflandsson 
        takes a swipe at Loren Eisley, as follows: "_Arcturus_ is seemingly 
        filled with contradictions, and though Lindsay does not _seek_ to 
        confuse us, neither does he intend that we have an easy time of it.  
        Maskull's confusion _must_ be our confusion, unless we are quick enough
        to recognize the one symbol in _Arcturus_ that will allow us to discard
        illusion as we encounter it.  Loren Eisley, in his much maligned intro-
        duction to the Ballantine edition of _Arcturus_, failed to grasp this 
        symbol's full significance and so was unable to interpret the book as 
        anything more than a fragmentary melange of Lindsay's perceptions.  
        Lindsay's indicator is the 'vulgar, sordid, bestial grin' seen on the 
        face of the apparition Krag has 'murdered.' " He goes on to argue that 
        whenever that grin appears Lindsay is "symbolically rejecting the 
        beliefs and morality of that being's life."  In short, it is not a 
        particularly brilliant piece of work ... 
          [ Maskull is the protagonist in _Arcturus_ ; Krag is a secondary
        character, albeit an important one.  WDBL]

  The Haunted Woman.  London: Methuen, 1922.  Reprints: London: Gollancz, 1964;
    Hollywood: Newcastle (Forgotten Fantasy Series), 1975, 1980; Hollywood: 
    Newcastle (Forgotten Fantasy Series), 1975 [paperback]; Trafalger Sq: 
    David & Charles, 1988 [paperback].  The Newcastle hardcover (ISBN 
    0-89370-503-9), Newcastle paperback (ISBN 0-87877-103-4), and David & 
    Charles paperback (ISBN 0-86241-162-9) are all in print.

  Sphinx.  London: John Long, 1923.  Reprints: London: Xanadu, 1988; New York:
    Carroll and Graf, Inc. 1988.  The Carroll and Graf edition is still in 
    print (ISBN 0-88184-416-0).  

  The Adventures of M. de Mailly.  First edition: London: Melrose, 1926;
    Reprint [as Blade for Sale]: New York: McBride, 1927.  Not reprinted 
    since as far as I've been able to learn.

  Devil's Tor.  London: Putnam's, 1932.  Reprint: New York: Arno Press, 1978, 
    Reginald, R. & Melville, D. eds.  The Arno edition is in print (ISBN 
    0-405-10995-4) but the list price is prohibitive ($40.00).

  The Violet Apple and The Witch.  Ed. J.B. Pick.  Chicago: Chicago Review
    Press, 1976.  Reprint: London: Sidgwich & Jackson, 1978.  out-of-print.

  Sketch Notes for a New System of Philosophy.  Unpublished; in Scottish
    National Library.

--

Secondary Source Bibliography:

   [Taken partly from the responses and mostly from the Wolfe reference (the
    fourth item below), and thus contains no items later than 1982.  Books 
    (when devoted exclusively to Lindsay) have been listed first.  The annota-
    tions following certain entries if not otherwise attributed are from the 
    Wolfe reference.  Essentially, this is the entire secondary source list 
    from Wolfe plus additions.  Ordinarily this would not be feasible but 
    Lindsay is sufficiently unknown that the list is quite short, considering 
    how long ago he published. ]

  Sellin, Bernard.  _The Life and Works of David Lindsay, translated by 
    Kenneth Gunnell.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.  The 
    first scholarly biography of Lindsay and the longest sustained critical 
    discussion of his works to date; originally a doctoral thesis at the 
    Sorbonne. 

  Wilson, Colin, E.H. Visiak, and J.B. Pick.  _The Strange Genius of David
    Lindsay_.  London: John Baker, 1970.  A collection of essays and remini-
    scences that is the major source of information on Lindsay, but contains 
    little critical perspective. 

  Wilson, Colin.  _The Haunted Man: The strange Genius of David Lindsay_.
    San Bernardino, Cal: Borgo Press, 1979.  With the exception of a brief 
    new discussion of _The Haunted Woman_, essentially a reprint of Wilson's 
    essay in _The Strange Genius of David Lindsay_. 

  Wolfe, Gary K.  _David Lindsay_. (Starmont Reader's Guides to Contemporary
    Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors.)  Starmont House, 1982.

  Amis, Kingsley.  "Adventures on a Distant Star" (rev. of _A Voyage to 
    Arcturus_).  New York Times Book Review, 24 Nov 1963, p 60.  Some valid 
    criticisms, but chiefly useful as an indication of the sort of reviews 
    _Arcturus_ has consistently received. 

  Cawthorn, James, and Michael Moorcock.  _Fantasy: The 100 Best Books_.  New
    York: Carroll & Graf, 1991, pp 71-71 and 75-76.  They include _Arcturus_
    and _The Haunted Woman_ as two of their 100.  [WDBL]

  Lewis, C.S.  "On Stories", in _Of Other Worlds_: Essays and Stories.  
    Ed. Walter Hooper.  New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1966, pp 3-21.  
    Contains a a brief discussion of _Arcturus_, praising it for its "lived
    dialectic".  

  McClure, J. Derrick.  "_Devil's Tor_: A Rehabilitation of David Lindsay's
    'Monster'. "  _Extrapolation_, 21, 4 (Winter 1980), 367-378.

  McClure, J. Derrick.  " 'Purely as Entertainment?' _Adventures of Monsieur
    de Mailly_ as a Representative Work of David Lindsay."  _Studies in 
    Scottish Literature, 11 (1974), 226-236.  Argues that the deceptions 
    and intrigue of _de Mailly_ are consistent with Lindsay's broader themes
    of illusion and self-deception; also briefly discusses other novels. 

  Pick, J.B.  "The Work of David Lindsay." _Studies in Scottish Literature,
    1 (1964), 171-182.  General essay represents an early attempt to revive
    the study of Lindsay.  

  Pohl, Joy. "Dualities in David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_" 
    _Extrapolation_, 22, 2 (Summer 1981), 164-170.  

  Rabkin, Eric S. "Conflation of Genres and Myths in David Lindsay's _A Voyage
    to Arcturus_."  _The Journal of Narrative Technique_, 7 (1977), 149-55.
    Analyzes _A Voyage to Arcturus_ as a blending of science-fiction episodes
    and an overall fantasy structure that uses fantasy to extend science-
    fiction into the realm of serious myth.  

  Rabkin, Eric S.  _The Fantastic in Literature_.  Princeton: Princeton 
    University Press, 1976.  Discusses _Arcturus_ as an example of how 
    'escape' literature may have a serious purpose.  

  Russ, Joanna.  "Dream-Literature and Science Fiction."  _Extrapolation,
    11 (1969), 6-14.  Cites _Arcturus_ as an example of adolescent 'dream-
    literature', inferior to better science-fiction.  

  Schofield, Jack. "Cosmic Imagery in _A Voyage to Arcturus_." _Extrapolation_,
    13 (1972), 146-151.  Reply to Russ defends _Arcturus_ and points out
    interesting parallels to Dante and others.  

  Scholes, Robert, and Eric S. Rabkin.  _Science-Fiction: History, Science,
    Vision_.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.  pp. 207-212 discuss
    _Arcturus_ as a "representative" science-fiction novel.  

  Visiak, E.H.  "The Arcturan Shadow."  _Notes and Queeries_, 178 (1940), 
    225-227.  The earliest critical appreciation of Lindsay; draws Miltonic 
    parallels.  

  Wilson, Colin.  _Eagle and Earwig_.  London: John Baker, 1966.  A chapter
    on _Arcturus_ mostly recounts Wilson's experiences with the novel.  

  Wolfe, Gary K. "David Lindsay and George MacDonald."  _Studies in Scottish 
    Literature, 12 (1974), 131-145.  Argues for MacDonald's influence on
    Lindsay and notes parallels between their careers.  

  Wolfe, Gary K. "Symbolic Fantasy." _Genre_, 8 (1975), 194-209. Places 
    Lindsay in a tradition of symbolic, rather than allegorical, fantasy.  

--

General Information:

Biographical summary: Lindsay was born in 1878 and was working as a clerk for 
  Lloyd's of London by the turn of the century.  He was entirely self-taught,
  never having attended university; "this may account for the somewhat eclectic 
  and idiosyncratic reading that influenced [him] ..." (Wolfe, p. 9).  He
  served in the British army during WWI without leaving England and in 1919 
  left Lloyd's to write.  His books were strikingly inventive but failed to
  attract an audience (_Arcturus_ sold 596 copies in the first printing while 
  _Devil's Tor_ sold 650 copies).  As a result he was unable to publish 
  anything after 1932 (though _Violet Apple and _Witch_ had been completed) 
  nor would any publisher re-issue _Arcturus_.  Thereafter he increasingly 
  sank into isolation, depression, and penury, to eventually die in 1945.  
  Meanwhile _Arcturus_ was slowly achieving underground fame, pushed by (among 
  others) C.S. Lewis, who was telling audiences at Merton College, Oxford, that
  Lindsay was "the real father of my planet books [i.e. Perelandra, etc.]".  
  The first re-issue of _Arcturus_ was in 1946.

[email-masked] (Timothy J Lundgren) writes:

    There is also a brief biography of Lindsay in Elflandsson's introduction.  
  He notes as influences on Lindsay: "the lonely, Highland hills, the music of 
  Beethoven, ...Norse sagas, the novels of George MacDonald [another, and more 
  important influence on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien], and the philosophical 
  works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche."  Lindsay lived from 1878 to 1945, so he 
  did not really die young.  He did not publish, however, after 1932.  Again 
  Elflandsson: "Unable to support his family through writing, Lindsay finally 
  succumbed to frustration and bitterness.  In his final years, he grew silent,
  reclusive, and careless of his health.  In fact, his fatalism was grown so 
  great that he actually died from blood poisoning caused by the neglect of 
  his rotting teeth!"  
  [Note: the point about Lindsay's "not really" dying young was in response 
   to my original post.  That particular piece of misinformation came from 
   the Eisley Introduction.  WDBL]

[email-masked] (David Elworthy) writes (referring to The Strange 
  Genius of David Lindsay by Wilson et. al):

    This is a good and interesting book, not least for the insights it gives 
  into Lindsay's life. One anecdote I remember concerns the cause of his death.
  In his later years, he developed a morbid fear of dentists, and consequently 
  when one of his teeth went bad he refused to have it attended to. The conse-
  quence of this was that he ended up with gangrene of the jaw, from which he 
  died.  Sick? You bet.

[email-masked] (John Whitmore) writes:

    His writing style is such that one keeps recalling scenes, seeking new 
  insights.  I have found that it helps a LOT to discuss the work at length 
  with a friend (reminds me of a movie, _El Topo_, in this regard).

[email-masked] (Dai) writes:

    He was wildly unpopular, with good reason; most of his novels are bad 
  novels without the philosophical force of "Arcturus".

                  *                  *                  *

More on sources: "We do know that he was fond of German metaphysics, the Norse 
  sagas, historical works dealing with the Roman Empire, and personal memoirs 
  of the eighteenth century ...  Of the authors that we know to have been 
  represented in his library, those of particular interest include Goethe, 
  Nietzshe, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, and
  F. Max Muller's _Three Lectures on Vedanta Philosophy_.  But to regard these
  works as in any sense 'sources' for the phenomenal inventiveness of such
  works as _A Voyage to Arcturus_ would be misleading, for even in cases in
  which names or concepts are borrowed from earlier writers, Lindsay almost
  invariably altered the material in such a way as to make the detection of
  the original meanings treacherous at best."  (Wolfe, p. 11)

--

A Voyage to Arcturus:

      This is the best-known and easiest to find of Lindsay's works.  It was 
  accepted for publication in 1920 but 15,000 words had to be cut first, of
  which no trace now remains (Argh).  A brief description follows.  
      The protagonist Maskull and his companions, Nightspore and Krag, journey 
  to Tormance, a planet orbitting Arcturus (actually a double star), in a 
  crystal torpedo.  (A piece of SF trivia is that the torpedo is an early FTL 
  spaceship: powered by Arcturian "back rays", i.e. light which is attracted 
  back to it's source, it makes the 100 light year journey in nineteen hours.)

  "   ... As the ship speeds into interstellar space, Maskull falls into a 
  profound sleep.  When he awakes, he is on Tormance, alone.  Nightspore, 
  Krag, and the ship have vanished. 
  "   He begins his journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, self-negation 
  across the bizarre landscapes of Tormance, under the punishing glare of the
  binary star's component suns, white Branchspell [Arcturus] and weirdly blue
  Alppain.  Already he has undergone the first of many metamorphoses, the 
  growing and discarding of new organs with which to interpret his changing
  environment.  It is a metaphysical odyssey, an amazing voyage through inner
  space, into a world of abstractions embodied in living shapes. ...
  "   ... it is not necessary to have ambitions of a trancendental kind to be
  enthralled by the fertility of Lindsay's imagination, the ever-changing land-
  scapes of Tormance, the host of strange beings who help or hinder Maskull as
  he marches towards his ultimate metamorphosis.  The journey is sufficient in
  itself. "     (Cawthorn and Moorcock, pp 71-72)

      What has stayed with me is the strikingly original manner in which even 
  minor details are rendered.  When presenting the landscape of Tormance 
  Lindsay invents two new colors, "jale" and "ulfire".  He communicates the 
  experience of seeing these colors by producing emotional analogues for red, 
  blue, and yellow and then doing the same for jale and ulfire.  Many of his 
  descriptions are filled with equally unusual metaphors.

--

The Haunted Woman:

  Cawthorn and Moorcock being their entry as follows (p. 75):

  "    If Hillary, after climbing Everest, had returned to find that everyone 
  had been looking the other way at the time, he might have felt as David 
  Lindsay did after _A Voyage to Arcturus_ was published.  It was remaindered 
  with less than 600 copies sold.  The mountain being too steep and the air 
  too rarified for popular consumption, the only recourse was to descend to 
  the plains.  Brighton and its environs formed the territory of his next 
  novel, and his characters were recognizably denizens of the 1920's.
  "    _Arcturus_ had baffled and upset the critics, but they had admitted to 
  being faced with something out of the ordinary.  By resorting to an outwardly
  conventional romantic entanglement between contemporary people, Lindsay sent 
  them off in quite another, but equally wrong, direction.  He was not writing 
  a ghost story or a tale of star-crossed lovers; at least, not in the way in 
  which some of them interpreted it.
  "    It is debatable whether the supernatural justification for the strange  
  house in _The Haunted Woman_ is any more necessary than the crystal spaceship
  which took Maskull to Arcturus ... "  

      And then they go on, in a synopsis, to indicate that there was just as 
  much philosophizing in the background of _The Haunted Woman) as there was in 
  _Arcturus_.

[email-masked] (Will Linden) writes:

      My assessment: anyone expecting another ARCTURUS will be disappointed. 
  It has little of the Tormantic quality.

[email-masked] (David Elworthy) writes:

      I've read the first two of the above [_Violet Apple and _Haunted Woman_].
  They are both hard work and not very rewarding - a considerable disappoint-
  ment after _Voyage_. Both consist of dull stories about romantic assignations
  amongst the English middle classes of the 1920s, with a bit of supernatural 
  stuff thrown in on top to keep the plot chuntering along. Read them if you 
  like, but be prepared for a disappointment.  Having said that, they both do 
  have moments where they come to life and you see some of the magic of 
  _Voyage_ shining through.

--

Sphinx:

  [email-masked] (Dai) writes:

      "Sphinx" was an entertaining but rather confused story of love triangles
  among the upper-middle class in a village in the South of England.  The 
  only SF element is a fascinating dream-recorder which the protagonist is 
  inventing.  While it will hardly win anyone's awards, it was well-written
  and ended with the usual Lindsayan death-glorification and philosophy.

--

The Adventures of M. de Mailly:

  Gary K. Wolfe (p. 57):

  "    The charge of triviality has been more consistently and seriously 
  brought to bear against the novel that Lindsay published three years after 
  _Sphinx_.  _The Adventures of M. de Mailly_ (1926) is a complex account of 
  social and political intrigues at the court of Louis the Fourteenth and is 
  the only novel of Lindsay's to contain no element of fantasy.  Compared to 
  Lindsay's other works, _de Mailly_ was relatively successful; in 1927, 
  retitled _Blade for Sale_, it became the first of his works to appear in the 
  United States.  Colin Wilson, J.B. Pick, and E.H. Visiak pretty generally 
  dismiss the novel as a "potboiler" written solely as an entertainment and to 
  raise money, but J. Derrick McClure ... makes an interesting case for 
  regarding it as among the mainstream of Lindsay's writing.  McClure argues 
  that the themes of illusion and self-deception, particularly in regard to 
  social behavior, are as much a part of this novel as of Lindsay's fantasies 
  -- hence the setting in the court of Louis the Fourteenth, 'where social 
  ceremonial was developed to a degree rarely surpassed.' [McClure, 1974]  The 
  novel consists of four episodes concerning an ingenious and witty courtier 
  named de Mailly, whose complex schemes and whose understanding of people's 
  capacity to be tricked by their own illusions enable him to survive in a 
  world of unrelenting intrigue and betrayal.  The complex of false assump-
  tions, mistaken identities, coincidences, cross-purposes, schemes, treach-
  eries, and the like that go to make up the plot at once parody such authors 
  as Dumas and raise their art to a level of remarkable ingenuity. "

--

Devil's Tor:

  Gary K. Wolfe (p. 47):

  " ... By the time Devil's Tor was published, Lindsay had not published a 
  novel in more than five years and was becoming increasingly embittered about 
  his failure to find an audience. This sense of failure is apparent in the
  novel: it is certainly the most uncompromising and difficult of all the works
  published during his lifetime, and much of this difficulty seems to arise 
  from his lack of concessions to the reader.  The pacing of the novel is 
  excruciatingly slow, the style often completely out of control, the charac-
  terizations harsh and unengaging, and the ideas obtuse and relentlessly 
  detailed.  But the work is as rich in ideas as _A Voyage to Arcturus_, and
  if the reader approaches it as a philosophical disquisition rather than as
  as series of actions, it can be among the most rewarding and fascinating of
  Lindsay's books.

  "    Lindsay's own account of the novel, written in a letter to his pub-
  lisher, provides a concise summary of what he was attempting:

          _Devil's Tor_ was conceived in a spirit of music ... To the curious 
      in such matters I should have to refer _Devil's Tor_, as to its primary
      origins, not to any master of prose, living or dead, but to the tremen-
      dous creator of the Ninth Symphony.  The first movement of that work has 
      generally been more or less in my head during the book's writing.  But 
      the story's actual themes -- Fate made visible, the Great Mother, the 
      mystic stones belonging to a world of other dimensions, the part of the 
      Northern races in history, the supernatural bringing-together of a chosen
      pair for the uplifting of humanity, the purpose of the creation of the 
      universes -- these belong not to one time or one mental birth, but have 
      been built up of infinite darkness and confusion.  The eye caring to 
      discern will see in them the evident traces of an astronomical parallax:
      by which I mean a progress of the story, not only from the first chapter 
      to the last, but across the sky-space of thought itself.  [quoted by Pick 
      in Wilson et. al., 1974, p. 28]

  It is apparent that Lindsay has chosen vast themes for his novel, and indeed
  he does treat of the purpose of the world, the nature of fate, the evolution
  of the human races, the origin of religions, and the function of art!  He has
  attempted to encompass all these themes and more in a story as simple on the
  surface as that of _The Haunted Woman_: the story of the discovery and 
  eventual bringing together of two halves of a mystical stone which had been
  broken in distant antiquity.  "

--

The Violet Apple:

  [email-masked] (David Elworthy) writes:

      I can't actually say very much about _The Violet Apple_: it's one of 
  those books that obstinately refuses to stay fixed in my memory ... ; this 
  means the descriptions that follows is probably very inaccurate[.]

      The plot, as far as I can remember it, involves two couples who come into 
  possession of a family heirloom containing some seeds which are supposed to 
  be from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. The seeds are kept in a 
  glass ornament, which gets broken early on in the book. They plant the seeds,
  and a tiny apple tree starts to grow, on which appears one (or two, I'm not 
  sure) violet apples.  This takes places over the period of the middle part 
  of the book, during which time, various tensions between the four main 
  characters develop. Near the end, two of them - the man from one couple and 
  the woman from the other - eat the apples, and gain an altered perception of 
  the world, and in particular an altered perception of morality and moral 
  imperatives. It's like _Arcturus_ in that the message is perhaps best 
  appreciated in an intuitive and emotional way, rather than a rational one, 
  which is perhaps why I find it hard to summarise the significant content of 
  the book. It's more satisfying than _The Haunted Woman_, but far less so than
  _Arcturus_: the last two or three chapters have the same kind of concealed 
  profoundness, but you have to wade through a lot before you arrive there.

--

The Witch:

  Gary K. Wolfe (p. 60):

  "    _The Witch_ is almost as difficult to read as _Devil's Tor_, and like 
  that earlier novel it is full of lengthy passages of introspection and 
  meditation on the nature of love, both as a force within the world and a
  force for transcending the world; on the meaning and nature of the Ancient;
  on the role of the Ancient and the Great Mother in history and psychology;
  on the role of illusion in life; and so on.  More than that earlier novel,
  however, it shows that Lindsay's philosophy does not end with _A Voyage to
  Arcturus_, that the apparent process of world-negating that goes on in that
  novel was intended by its author to be merely a prelude to something else,
  that there was indeed a story yet to be told after Krag and Nightspore set
  off into the dark waters at the end of that novel.  In many ways, Lindsay's
  problem was not unlike Dante's in writing the Commedia: the Inferno is 
  striking, dramatic, and relatively easy to portray; but paradise, the 
  positive vision that follows the negative, is a far more difficult concept
  to explain.  "

--

End Note.

      As far as getting these books goes, it looks like _Arcturus_, _Haunted
Woman_, and _Sphinx_ would be easy; _Devil's Tor_ would be straightforward if
one were enamoured enough to spend the money; _The Violet Apple and The Witch_
would require hitting the used bookstore circuit or doing an out-of-print
search; and _de Mailly_ almost impossible.  If it came to that one's only 
recourse would probably be to just xerox a library copy, if one could find 
a library that had one.  Widener Library at Harvard actually does have one, 
but then, they like having a copy of every book ever published. 

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                           |  "And that, I may tell you beforehand, Maskull,"
                           | said Krag, grinning, "is Crystalman's trump card."
William D.B. Loos          |  "How do you mean?"
                           |  "You'll see.  You'll renounce the world so 
[email-masked] | eagerly that you'll want to stay in the world 
                           | merely to enjoy your sensations."
                           |                           -- A Voyage to Arcturus
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