Уильям Хоуп Ходжсон: Жизнь и творчество английского писателя.

English author

William Hope Hodgson (15 November 1877 – 19 April 1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Hodgson used his experiences at sea to lend authentic detail to his short horror stories, many of which are set on the ocean, including his series of linked tales forming the "Sargasso Sea Stories". His novels, such as The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), feature more cosmic themes, but several of his novels also focus on horrors associated with the sea. Early in his writing career Hodgson dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved renown as a bodybuilder. He died in World War I at age 40.

Hodgson was born in the hamlet of Blackmore End near Braintree in Essex, the son of the Reverend Samuel Hodgson, an Anglican priest, and Lissie Sarah Brown. He was the second of 12 children, three of whom died in infancy. According to Sam Moskowitz,

The primary motivation of his body development was not health, but self defence. His relatively short height and sensitive, almost beautiful face made him an irresistible target for bullying seamen. When they moved in to pulverize him, they would learn too late that they had come to grips with easily one of the most powerful men, pound for pound, in all England. The theme of bullying of an apprentice by older seamen, and revenge taken, appeared frequently in his sea stories. While away at sea, in addition to his exercises with weights and with a punching bag, Hodgson also practised his photography, taking photographs of aurora borealis, cyclones, lightning, sharks, and the maggots that infested the food given to sailors. He also built up a stamp collection, practised his marksmanship while hunting, and kept journals of his experiences at sea. Among his customers were members of the Blackburn police force. In 1902, Hodgson himself appeared on stage with handcuffs and other restraining devices supplied by the Blackburn police department and applied the restraints to Harry Houdini, who had previously escaped from the Blackburn jail. Hodgson turned his attention to fiction, publishing his first short story, "The Goddess of Death", in 1904, followed shortly by "A Tropical Horror" (1905). He also contributed to an article in The Grand Magazine, taking the "No" side in a debate on the topic "Is the Mercantile Navy Worth Joining?" In this piece, Hodgson laid out in detail his negative experiences at sea, including facts and figures about salaries. This led to a second article in The Nautical Magazine, an exposé on the subject of apprenticeships; at the time, families often were forced to pay to have boys accepted as apprentices. Hodgson began to give paid lectures, illustrated with his photography in the form of colorized slides, about his experiences at sea. Although he wrote a number of poems, only a handful were published during his lifetime; several, such as "Madre Mia" (1907), appeared as dedications to his novels. Apparently cynical about the prospects of publishing his poetry, in 1906 he published an article in The Author magazine, suggesting that poets could earn money by writing inscriptions for tombstones. Many of his poems were published by his widow in two posthumous collections, but some 48 poems were not published until their appearance in the collection The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson (2005).

Hodgson's first short story was "The Goddess of Death" (1904), in which he utilised a statue of Flora which stood in Corporation Park, Blackburn, as the focus of a tale in which a Hindu statue, seized from an Indian temple, stood in a small English town. The statue comes alive to take its revenge on the people who stole it. The Royal Magazine published the story in April 1904. In 1906, the American magazine The Monthly Story Magazine published "From the Tideless Sea", the first of Hodgson's Sargasso Sea stories. Hodgson continued to sell stories to American magazines as well as British magazines for the remainder of his career, carefully managing the rights to his work in order to maximize his remuneration. In 1916, he was thrown from a horse and suffered a broken jaw and a serious head injury; he received a mandatory discharge on 10 June 1916, and returned to writing. Refusing to remain on the sidelines of WWI, Hodgson recovered sufficiently to re enlist, receiving a new commission as second lieutenant on 18 March 1917. On 10 October 1917 he was promoted to lieutenant, though this was not gazetted until after his death. His published articles and stories from the time reflect his experience in war.

Hodgson was killed by the direct impact of an artillery shell at the Fourth Battle of Ypres in April 1918; sources suggest either the 17th or 19th.

Hodgson is most widely known for two works. The House on the Borderland (1908) is a novel of which H. P. Lovecraft, in his long essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", wrote "but for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality [it] would be a classic of the first water". The Night Land (1912) is a much longer novel, written in an archaic style and expressing a sombre vision of a sunless far future world; Lovecraft described it as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". and Henry S. Whitehead were also influenced by Hodgson's writings. Modern authors who cite Hodgson as an influence include Iain Sinclair, Gene Wolfe, Greg Bear, China Miéville, Simon Clark, Elizabeth Massie, Tim Lebbon, and Brian Keene.

Hodgson's widow, Bessie, worked to keep his books in print and to publish works he was not able to get published during his lifetime, including two books of poetry. After Bessie Hodgson died in 1943, Hodgson's sister Lissie took over his literary estate. While the first six Carnacki stories were collected during Hodgson's lifetime, "The Haunted Jarvee" appeared posthumously in 1929, and two more Carnacki stories, "The Find" and "The Hog," were published in 1947 by August Derleth. One Captain Gault story, "The Plans of the Reefing Bi Plane", was not published until 1996, when it was included in the short story collection Terrors of the Sea. Some of Hodgson's poems were first published in 2005, when they appeared in The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson. A number of other Hodgson works are reprinted for the first time since their original publication in the five volume Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson series published by Night Shade Books. Copyright protection has now expired on most of Hodgson's work, , including many of his poems.