Buchanalia – now there’s a word. Not every writer has the talent or output to contribute their own moniker to the English lexicon.
Perhaps ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’ is the only remnant of John Buchan’s prodigious oeuvre in the mainstream 21st century consciousness. And that largely because of the movie rather than the book. But this Scottish polymath was in his day (1875-1940) one of the most loved writers on earth.
We have just acquired a rather beautiful small library of his books from a Buchan specialist and thought those few and hardy types out there who maintain a taste for this sometimes suspenseful, sometimes controversial, sometimes purely escapist writer, would appreciate us putting it on the air.
“Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.’ (JB)
One of the most interesting of the Buchan volumes we’ve acquired is ‘Scholar Gypsies’ ($60) in the first pocket book edition published by The Bodley Head in 1937. ‘Scholar Gypsies’ was Buchan’s second book (and remember he wrote over one hundred) in which he essays on a story told and retold by British writers going right back to Joseph Glanville’s ‘Vanity Of Dogmatizing’ in the mid 1600s. It is the tale of how a disaffected Oxford student spurns the privileged halls of academia to better augment his education by travelling amongst nature with the gypsies. The Scholar Gypsy was made particularly famous by Matthew Arnold’s poem of 1853 and its theme of course appeals to the naturalist in Buchan, and also to his iconoclastic side. Indeed it’s a fascinating capacity he had to move seamlessly between establishment and anti-establishment positions, on the one hand attacking all snobbery and class and racial prejudice in both his books and activism, and on the other hand becoming the first Baron of Tweedmuir, His Majesty's High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and eventually the Governor General of Canada.
‘We do not want to be like the Greeks, powerful and prosperous wherever we settle, but with a dead Greece behind us. We must combat materialism, complacency, and authoritarianism.’ JB
Of course the ardent Buchan is very popular amongst the Presbyterian Scots but as a novelist Buchan is most favoured for his spy thrillers and particularly the books featuring Robert Hannay, the first of which was ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’ and the second ‘Greenmantle’. But he wrote many books on historical subjects, had a penchant for supernatural stories, won a James Tait Memorial Prize for his biography of the Marquess of Montrose, and was a greatly respected chronicler of the First World War in books such as ‘Episodes Of The Great War’ and ‘The Battle Of The Somme.’
‘The best prayers have often more groans than words.’ JB
By all accounts there was a time when you couldn’t move in a British bookshop without tripping over a Buchan novel. Times have changed of course, but not necessarily here at Barwon Booksellers. Below is a small sample of the Buchan books we have for sale. Further enquiries can be made by email - mail@barwonbooksellers.com.au - or come in and look at the window - and mind the step.