Betty Ballantine, who was (among many other things) behind the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy series from 1969-1974, in which Evangeline Walton’s four Mabinogion books were published, passed away last week at the age of 99. She also wrote the Introduction to the combined volume of Walton’s Mabinogion Tetralogy, published by the Overlook Press in 2001.
Locus Online has a fuller obituary here.
I’ve just posted, over at my “Tolkien and Fantasy” blog, another part of a series of posts on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which ran from 1969-1974. This illustrated post covers the history of Walton’s book as regards the series. You can read it here.
A quick note to call attention to Nicole A. Thomas’s 2013 PhD thesis at Cardiff University on The Daughters of Modron: Evangeline Walton’s Feminist Re-visioning of the ‘Mabinogi’. This is available to read via: http://orca.cf.ac.uk/43713/
It’s very nice to see Walton’s writings getting more academic attention.
In this short video, author Christopher Paolini shares why the Mabinogion Tetralogy, by Evangeline Walton, is one of his favorite fantasy works.
From the Sunday, February 23, 2013, Centipede Press Newsletter:
Centipede Press has finally put up an order page for their forthcoming expanded edition of Witch House, due out in December. Currently there is a pre-publication discount (I don’t know how long this will last), the regular price being $100 and the discounted price being $65. Only 200 copies are being done for sale, so move fast if you are interested.
There is a lot of special content in this edition. It includes Walton’s prologue that was written for the UK edition of 1950, and which has never fully been reprinted anywhere else. This edition is illustrated by Rodger Gerberding, with a dust-wrapper by J.K. Potter. There is a lengthy introduction by Douglas A. Anderson, an interview with Walton by Darrell Schweitzer, plus tantalizing two chapters from an unfinished novel of Salem witchcraft that Walton began in the late 1940s. And more . . .
See the many details and sample pages by clicking to the Centipede press order page here. (And keep scrolling down to see more.)
Here are links to a few early reviews of She Walks in Darkness:
From Sleeping Hedgehog:
“They don’t write ’em like this any more. Thoughtfully resurrected and beautifully presented by Tachyon, Evangeline Walton’s She Walks In Darkness is quite literally an artifact, and I mean that in the best way possible. It is a meticulously crafted, utterly gorgeous creation that is intrinsically of its time and place, and which could not have been created by anyone, anywhen or anywhere else.”
Read the rest here.
And from Kirkus:
“Old Mattia Rossi’s body is gone. It no longer lies at the foot of the cellar stairs. This morning, when I finally braced myself to go down and look for those keys I need to badly, it was not there.”
“With these ominous first lines of She Walks in Darkness, we are introduced to the Gothic Adventures of Barbara Keyes, the newly married wife of archaeologist Richard Keyes, as she honeymoons at an isolated Tuscan villa.”
Read the Kirkus review here.
A quick note to call attention to the fact that Tachyon Publications has just released Evangeline Walton’s novel She Walks in Darkness, a kind of Gothic thriller written in the 1960s. Tachyon has done a splendid job packaging it, with an excellent cover by Thomas Canty, an introduction by Paul di Filippo, and blurbs by Tim Powers and Patricia McKillip. There is also a short afterword by me about the background of the manuscript. She Walks in Darkness is published as a trade paperback at $14.95, and can be ordered via Amazon US by clicking here for the paperback and here for the Kindle ($7.99), and via Amazon UK by clicking here for the paperback (£12.50).
Evangeline Walton 