Out of the Omnibus: Violet Hunt

Who?

Don’t worry, I’d never heard of her before either, and I have no idea why not.

I started my dive into THE OMNIBUS OF CRIME in the back, in the section labeled: MACROCOSMOS (Stories of the Human and Inhuman) pt. 2: Tales of Blood and Cruelty. Why? I’m not sure, except it sounded good. And of the six stories there, I decided to start with “The Corsican Sisters,” by Violet Hunt.

Who?

Well. Let me tell you.

First of all — this is Violet Hunt here.

Now, that’s an interesting face. She’s an English writer, and nobody I ever heard of before. But I like her. A lot.

She is, or was, according to this NYT review of her biography the daughter of a pre-Raphealite painter and a novelist. She was friends with Oscar Wilde. She was a feminist of the era of Mrs. Pankhurst. She had affairs with Somerset Maughm and H.G. Wells. She wrote some seriously creepy mysteries, if “The Corsican Sisters” is anything to go by, and apparently also went in for horror and the supernatural.

Um. Whoa.

She’s still in print too. I found her over at Indiebound.org and, yes, she seems to be on Amazon in various forms.

And you can be I’ll be bugging the good folks over at Aunt Agatha’s to find out if they’ve got any of her stuff in house.

NEXT UP: “The Corsican Sisters” A New Review of an Old Tale