whatcathyreadnext

The Dancing Floor is the sixth book in my John Buchan reading project, Buchan of the Month 2019. You can find out more about the project and the books I read in 2018 here, and view my reading list for 2019 here.

What follows is a (spoiler-free) introduction to The Dancing Floor. It is also an excuse to show off my paperback copy of the book published by Hodder in 1961 with its cover that, to my mind, more resembles a poster for a B-movie than a John Buchan novel! I will be publishing my review of the book later in the month.

The Dancing Floor was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in July 1926. In the United States it appeared first in serial form, under the title ‘The Goddess from the Shades’, in Street & Smith’s Popular Magazine between May and June 1926. It was published in novel form in the US by Houghton Mifflin on 24^th September 1926.

John Buchan first explored the idea for the novel in a supernatural short story called ‘Basilissa’ published in Blackwood’s Magazine in April 1914 and included in the US (but not the UK) edition of the short story collection, The Watcher by the Threshold. As Ursula Buchan explains in her recent biography of her grandfather, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps, the story was inspired by a cruise John Buchan and his wife, Susan, made in the company of friend Gerard Craig Sellar in 1910. ‘They […] sailed down the coast of Euboea to Athens, passing the Petali islands on the way, where they were intrigued by a shuttered and impenetrable house, standing back from the shore in a walled garden.’ Ten years later Buchan expanded his short story to novel length, adding the character Sir Edward Leithen who had first appeared in The Power-House.

Like his other adventure stories (or as Buchan termed them, his ‘shockers’) The Dancing Floor enjoyed considerable commercial success. Janet Adam Smith reports that in the UK it sold 31,000 copies in its first year after publication making it his best performing book after The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle. It had first year sales in the US of 10,000 copies. Combined sales by 1960 for the Hodder & Stoughton edition and later Nelson edition were 122,000 copies.

Sources:

Ursula Buchan, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])
Kenneth Hillier and Michael Ross, The First Editions of John Buchan: A Collector’s Illustrated Biography (Avonworld, 2008)

My5FavouriteMayReads

Rather surprising myself, I managed to read fifteen books in May. You can find details of my five favourite of the books I read last month below. Click on the book title to view the book description on Goodreads.

You can keep up to date with all my reading in 2019 here with links to my reviews. If we’re not already friends on Goodreads, send me a friend request or follow my reviews.

First up is memoir Where the Hornbeam Grows by Beth Lynch. Subtitled A Journey in Search of a Garden, the book describes the author’s move to Switzerland and her struggles to make a life – and a garden – in a new country.

Next up it’s historical fiction in the form of Storm of Steel by Matthew Harffy. The book is the sixth in his ‘Bernicia Chronicles’ series set in 7^th century Anglo-Saxon Britain. I described it as ‘action-packed, dramatic and realistic: historical fiction at its best’ but you can read my full review here.

Staying with historical fiction but with more of a romantic feel, my next pick is Stealing Roses by Heather Cooper. Set in 1862, in the seaside town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, its heroine is Eveline Stanhope whom I described as ‘independent-minded, intelligent, bookish and with a little bit of a rebellious streak’. Eveline rebels against the social expectations that seem to limit her life finding romance and a ‘different sort of freedom’ along the way. Read my full review here.

Past and present combine in my next pick, The Lost Shrine by Nicola Ford, the second in the author’s ‘Hills & Barbrook’ series. With its mixture of archaeology and crime mystery, I playfully described it as the intriguing love child of TV’s Midsomer Murders and Time Team. Read my full review to find out why.

Finally, and perhaps fittingly on the day we commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, there’s The Long Take by Robin Robertson. One of the books shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019, it tells the story of Walker, a young Canadian recently demobilised after active service, including at the Normandy landings. A novel in verse, it’s haunting and atmospheric (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it scooped the prize).