Robert Murray Gilchrist (6 January 1867 - 1917) was an English novelist and author of regional interest books about the Peak District of north central England. He is best known today for his decadent and Gothic short fiction.
During his lifetime he published some 100 short stories, 22 novels, six-story collections, and four non-fiction books.[1]
Gilchrist was born in Sheffield, England, the second son of Robert Murray Gilchrist and Isabella. He was educated at Sheffield Royal Grammar School and later privately. He never married. He worked briefly for noted editor William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) at National Observer (formerly The Scots Observer). He lived for much of his life in the North Derbyshire village of Holmesfield, living with his mother and a male companion at Cartledge Hall. From 1893 to 1897, he lived in a remote part of the Peak District and some sources say he lived a few months in Paris, France.[2] He began his writing career during 1890 with the publication of his first novel, Passion The Plaything. He contributed short stories to many periodicals, including The Temple Bar, Home Chimes and The Yellow Book. A productive writer, he published 22 novels, six short story collections, four regional interest books and one play (posthumously). During World War I, he was noted for his charitable assistance to Belgian refugees, many of whom attended his funeral during 1917.[3]
As an English novelist and regional writer, Robert Murray Gilchrist never achieved the recognition his colleagues and many critics thought he deserved. His friend, Eden Phillpotts wrote that "no record or estimate of the conte in English letters can be complete without study of his contributions thereto."[4] He dedicated his story collection, The Striking Hours, to Gilchrist, terming him "the master of the short story." Gilchrist's first story collection failed to draw much attention, and while he occasionally published short stories all of his life, including one, "The Crimson Weaver" in the celebrated magazine, The Yellow Book, the bulk of his output was his twenty-two novels, in addition to his six short story collections, a play and four regional guide books. He was friends with many noted writers including Phillpotts, William Sharp (Fiona MacLeod) and Hugh Walpole. He worked for noted editor and writer, William Ernest Henley, and he corresponded with Larner Sugden, Kineton Parkes and occasionally H. G. Wells.
Like his better-known contemporary, Vernon Lee, Gilchrist's modern literary revival started with less than two dozen strange tales. Virtually forgotten until horror anthologist Hugh Lamb reprinted his stories during the 1970s, his work includes fin-de-siècle Gothic fiction, similar in many ways to the fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Vernon Lee, Arthur Machen, Eric Stenbock and Richard Marsh.[5]
Gilchrist's first short story collection, The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances (1894) was a collection of weird and Decadent stories.[6] The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances failed to sell well, and while he occasionally published short stories all his life, the bulk of his output was a score of novels, two plays and two travel guide books. His modern revival began during the mid-1970s when Hugh Lamb started a crusade to renew interest in the Sheffield writer. Lamb successively published five of his Gothic tales in his series of nineteenth century horror anthologies. Lamb argued that Gilchrist was "an unrecognised master of the macabre story" and that The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances was "a book of the most remarkable and subtle fiction ever published".[7] Jack Sullivan in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural described Gilchrist as "a neglected master of horror who deserves revival". Michele Slung, introducing Gilchrist's story "The Basilisk", claimed that "this lush piece of nineteenth century prose has an almost operatic quality" and that the story contained "layers of even more suggestive meaning".[8] Brian Stableford selected three of his tales for The Dedalus Book of Decadence: Moral Ruins (1992). During 1998, the Charon Press reprinted the rare story collection, The Stone Dragon, followed by the larger Ash Tree Press collection, The Basilisk and Other Tales of Dread during 2003. During the early part of this century, two articles about Gilchrist appeared in All Hallows, the Canadian-based journal of the Ghost Story Society. His regional interest book, The Dukeries, was reprinted during 2001 and 2009. I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R Murray Gilchrist, which includes three tales not previously printed in modern editions, was published in 2021 as part of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.