BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1941147467 List Price: $19.99 U.S. Pages: 288 Published: 2015 |
Julian Grant Loses His Way (1933)
Claude Houghton Book Description
Shortly after dawn, Julian Grant finds himself in London, unsure of who he is or where he’s been, but sensing vaguely that he is on his way to an appointment. Taking refuge in a café to collect his thoughts over a cocktail, he is suddenly beset by a series of scenes and images from his past: his monastic childhood, the dismal years in a dreary office job, his unexpected inheritance of a fortune, his cruelty to the women who have loved him. As he struggles to understand his situation and figure out who he is and where he is going, he tries to discover the truth behind his strange experience. Is he going mad? Is he asleep and somehow trapped in a dreamworld? Or could there be some other, more chilling explanation for his disorientation and the disturbing visions to which he is being subjected? This first-ever reprint of the novel features a reproduction of its original jacket art. Claude Houghton (1889-1961) won a cult following in the 1930s for his mystery and thriller novels featuring razor-sharp dialogue and unusual metaphysical themes, the best known of which is I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930). Though praised by critics and widely admired by his fellow authors, including J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, and Henry Miller, Houghton has fallen into neglect and deserves rediscovery as a key novelist of the interwar period in Great Britain. Several of Houghton’s other novels are also available from Valancourt Books. |
reviews
“Claude Houghton’s novels are always interesting . . . Julian Grant Loses His Way is the best book of his that I have read . . . Houghton’s talent is at its best.” – Graham Greene, The Spectator
“Fascinating, absorbing reading . . . an arresting book.” – Kirkus Reviews
“He is an extremely interesting novelist, and a genuinely original one.” – J. B. Priestley
“Fascinating, absorbing reading . . . an arresting book.” – Kirkus Reviews
“He is an extremely interesting novelist, and a genuinely original one.” – J. B. Priestley
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Claude Houghton Oldfield was born in 1889 in Sevenoaks, Kent and was educated at Dulwich College. He trained as an accountant and worked in the Admiralty in the First World War, rejected for active service by poor eyesight. In 1920 he married a West End actress, Dulcie Benson, and they lived in a cottage in the Chiltern Hills. To a writers’ directory, Houghton gave his hobbies as reading in bed, riding, visiting Devon and abroad, and talking to people different to himself. He added: “I like dawn, and the dead of night, in great cities.” He disliked fuss, noise, crowds, rows, and being misquoted, or being told how much he owed “to some writer I’ve never read”.
Houghton’s earliest writing was poetry and drama before turning to prose fiction with his first novel, Neighbours, in 1926. In the 1930s, Houghton published several well-received novels that met with solid sales and respectable reviews, including I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930), easily his most popular and best-known work, Chaos Is Come Again (1932), Julian Grant Loses His Way (1933), This Was Ivor Trent (1935), Strangers (1938), and Hudson Rejoins the Herd (1939). Although he published nearly a dozen more novels throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most critics feel his later works are less significant than his novels of the 1930s.
Houghton was a prolific correspondent, generous in devoting his time to answering letters and signing copies for readers who enjoyed his books. One of these was novelist Henry Miller, who never met Houghton but began an impassioned epistolary exchange with him after being profoundly moved by his works. Houghton’s other admirers included his contemporaries P. G. Wodehouse, Clemence Dane, and Hugh Walpole. Houghton died in 1961.
Houghton’s earliest writing was poetry and drama before turning to prose fiction with his first novel, Neighbours, in 1926. In the 1930s, Houghton published several well-received novels that met with solid sales and respectable reviews, including I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930), easily his most popular and best-known work, Chaos Is Come Again (1932), Julian Grant Loses His Way (1933), This Was Ivor Trent (1935), Strangers (1938), and Hudson Rejoins the Herd (1939). Although he published nearly a dozen more novels throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most critics feel his later works are less significant than his novels of the 1930s.
Houghton was a prolific correspondent, generous in devoting his time to answering letters and signing copies for readers who enjoyed his books. One of these was novelist Henry Miller, who never met Houghton but began an impassioned epistolary exchange with him after being profoundly moved by his works. Houghton’s other admirers included his contemporaries P. G. Wodehouse, Clemence Dane, and Hugh Walpole. Houghton died in 1961.