That means we get truly delightful looks behind the scenes at the development of his literary taste, his bookshopping habits, or the origin and history of Tartarus Press – a small-edition publishing house that Russell co-runs, and which came to my attention when they reprinted Miss Hargreaves in the mid-2000s. Rather, he will use the book in question as a prompt for writing about something going on in his life. Compared to something like Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors ( which I enjoyed, and which also includes Miss Hargreaves), Russell’s book is much more personal and he doesn’t devote each short chapter exclusively to the book being mentioned. They are certainly books that reveal one man’s personal taste, and in some ways Fifty Forgotten Books is a memoir, a little like The Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith.

There certainly isn’t any attempt to make this an objective collection of titles. But, yes, there were an awful lot of titles and authors I’d never heard of, and I very much enjoyed reading why Russell had chosen them for inclusion. The fifth is The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson, perhaps one of the best-remembered names in the book. Four of those were actually books I discussed in my DPhil thesis ( The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson, The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay, Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser and – hurrah! – Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker). Of course, bibliophiles who tend to read slightly more obscure books will ask, ‘Are these really forgotten?’ And of course they are not all completely obscure books, but I have only read five of the 50. It’s exactly the sort of book I can’t resist, and it was every bit as enjoyable as I’d hoped. One of the books I took on holiday to read was also one of the books I’ve bought under Project 24 – Fifty Forgotten Books (2022) by R.B.

Supernatural Stories by Jean Russell