[Next Project] John Silence stories by Algernon Blackwood

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Alexander Keane

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Sep 10, 2025, 10:15:34 PM (5 days ago) Sep 10
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I've been interested in occult detective stories, from reading stuff like Dresden Files, and reading up on the genre pointed me back to the John Silence stories by Algernon Blackwood.

Blackwood short fiction is on the wanted list, and this would be a collection of six related stories resulting in a word count around 110k-120k.

Project Gutenberg conveniently has the stories packaged into two collections of three stories each. (There's also another PG book transcribing the original "John Silence, Physician Extraordinary" collection from 1908, which contains the first five John Silence stories)

Three John Silence Stories: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10624
Three More John Silence Stories: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10659
Scans for original five stories: https://archive.org/details/johnsilencephysi00blac
Scans for Occult Review Vol 20 n 6 Dec 1914, containing "A Victim of Higher Space": https://archive.org/details/IAPSOP-occult_review_v20_n6_dec_1914

(PG Link for the John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, corresponding to scans: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/49222)

Emma Sweeney

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Sep 10, 2025, 11:04:25 PM (5 days ago) Sep 10
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An Algernon Blackwood omnibus was attempted a few years ago, and the short fiction portion contained 155 short stories that are listed in this spreadsheet. It has been a while since this list was made, so you would need to do some more research to see if there are more short stories in the public domain. I just wanted to give you a heads-up about the scope of this production before you dive in.

Emma

Weijia Cheng

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Sep 11, 2025, 7:33:17 AM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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By the way, the last time a Blackwood omnibus was attempted, it got quite sidetracked due to lack of communication with the editors as to what texts should go into what collections. If you are going to work on Blackwood, please make a case for how to divide his writing before doing anything else. Asking because I had to compile the spreadsheet Emma linked dividing everything up into genres!

Alex Cabal

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Sep 11, 2025, 2:18:34 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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OK, I think this sounds reasonable. As Emma mentioned there is a
spreadsheet, so please update it to indicate that these six stories are
in a different collection.

Please send a link to your repo once you get started.
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Alexander Keane

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Sep 11, 2025, 8:53:12 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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Alright, as I get ready to set up the repository, I'm going to use the title "John Silence Stories" to be consistent with the collections "Allan Quartermain Stories" and "Mr. Mulliner Stories" already released.

I thought about using the title of the original collection "John Silence, Physician Extraordinary" but I'm including the sixth John Silence story that did not come from that original collection.

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Emma Sweeney

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Sep 11, 2025, 9:51:32 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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"John Silence Stories" makes sense. It looks like other John Silence collections renumbered the cases to be cases 1-6.

Emma

Alex Cabal

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Sep 11, 2025, 10:21:45 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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OK - send a repo link please. Thanks!
> ebooks/10659 <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10659>
> > Scans for original five stories: https://archive.org/details/
> <https://archive.org/details/>
> > johnsilencephysi00blac
> > Scans for Occult Review Vol 20 n 6 Dec 1914, containing "A Victim of
> > Higher Space": https://archive.org/details/IAPSOP- <https://
> archive.org/details/IAPSOP->
> > occult_review_v20_n6_dec_1914
> >
> > (PG Link for the John Silence, Physician Extraordinary,
> corresponding to
> > scans: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/49222 <https://gutenberg.org/
> ebooks/49222>)
> >
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Alexander Keane

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Sep 11, 2025, 10:46:04 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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Now that I know the title:


(Working on easiest way to create draft from multiple sources then I'll get things set for initial commit)

Alex Cabal

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Sep 11, 2025, 11:26:04 PM (4 days ago) Sep 11
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OK, Weijia will manage this with Robin reviewing.
> > <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10624 <https://gutenberg.org/
> ebooks/10624>>
> > > Three More John Silence Stories: https://gutenberg.org/
> <https://gutenberg.org/>
> > ebooks/10659 <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/10659 <https://
> gutenberg.org/ebooks/10659>>
> > > Scans for original five stories: https://archive.org/details/
> <https://archive.org/details/>
> > <https://archive.org/details/ <https://archive.org/details/>>
> > > johnsilencephysi00blac
> > > Scans for Occult Review Vol 20 n 6 Dec 1914, containing "A
> Victim of
> > > Higher Space": https://archive.org/details/IAPSOP- <https://
> archive.org/details/IAPSOP-> <https://
> > archive.org/details/IAPSOP- <http://archive.org/details/IAPSOP->>
> > > occult_review_v20_n6_dec_1914
> > >
> > > (PG Link for the John Silence, Physician Extraordinary,
> > corresponding to
> > > scans: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/49222 <https://
> gutenberg.org/ebooks/49222> <https://gutenberg.org/ <https://
> gutenberg.org/>
> > ebooks/49222>)
> > >
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Weijia Cheng

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Sep 12, 2025, 4:08:00 AM (4 days ago) Sep 12
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Alright, noted! I also updated the spreadsheet to note the new story collection.

Alexander Keane

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Sep 13, 2025, 8:49:57 AM (2 days ago) Sep 13
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I'm thinking of retaining the original collection's "Case X" title names for story headings, but since each "Case" is technically a short, I believe I should change the file names and section names from "chapter-X" to individual story name, correct? Eg. a-psychical-invasion.xhtml instead of chapter-1.xhtml

Weijia Cheng

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Sep 13, 2025, 3:21:16 PM (2 days ago) Sep 13
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Yes, I think that's fine.
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