6/1/26
Yesterday’s newsletter can be found here.
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The migration of THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE continues. The permanent home for episodes is here. Same thing is happening (albiet at a slower rate) with DEFENDERS DIALOGUE, which can be found here. They can be better protected from AI-bots and other content scrapers this way, as well as just all of the other beneficial reasons for bringing my IP back in house and under one sole roof. Eventually, after everything has finished migrating, a digital remastering endeavor will take place.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 48
Elephantasm by Tanith Lee
In Victorian England, a servant is exposed to the sins of colonialism that haunt a wealthy family in this dark Gothic fantasyfrom an award-winning author.
World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award–winning author
In a curio shop located in one of the darkest corners of Victorian London, young Annie Ember is gifted an ivory charm in the shape of an elephant. Its presence becomes the catalyst for the tragic events that alter her life. Annie's abusive brother-in-law is killed by her sister, who is sentenced to be hanged for protecting her. Alone and homeless, Annie secures employment as a maid in a country estate.
Sir Hampton Smolte earned his fortune as a soldier in the British Raj. In majestic palaces and sweltering jungles, he was exposed to a culture that embraced a pantheon of gods, consumed an unusual spicy cuisine, and confronted dangerous wildlife. Smolte loathed everything about India yet employed its women to raise his children, and upon his return to England, decorated his home with its treasures, artifacts, and iconography.
It is this home that Annie now serves. First in the depths of the kitchen among the bickering staff, then in the parlors of the family, where she's forced to submit to their eccentric demands and cruel desires. And as each of the Smoltes spirals further into madness, haunted by the shadow India casts over them, Annie's struggle to survive their whims conjures up the vengeance of an ancient power from a nation that suffered under the injustices of an empire.
Decades ago, probably around 2001 or 2002, a bunch of us were talking about some of our all-time favorite horror novels. (I can’t remember if it was at a convention or in the old Horrornet chat room. I suspect it was the latter). Regina Garza-Mitchell mentioned Elephantasm by Tanith Lee, and when she found out I hadn’t read it, she sent me a copy in the mail — the Dell-Abyss paperback edition from 1993, which I still own and will never get rid of, despite the fact that copies of that edition can command as much as $100 on the secondary market. That’s because it’s sentimental, of course (dud, one of my best friends gifted it to me) but also because it’s a great book, and it absolutely boggles my mind that there are no print editions currently available, other than via eBay and rare or used booksellers.
I had read plenty by Tanith Lee prior to that, but Elephantasm had somehow slipped past my radar. I stongly suspect it came down to money. By 1993, you could find a dozen or more new horror novels every month at the bookstore, and the month after that there’d be a new dozen to follow. It was hard, financially, for a young person to keep up with all of them, particularly a young person who was still living in a trailer with his first wife and their young kid and working a foundry job while typing away at night on a Brother WP3400 word processor in an attempt to become a writer.
This stand-alone novel shines with everything Tanith Lee is best known for — silken, poetic prose and rich, layered descriptions, and insightful and nuanced examination of themes. Specifically, in this novel, the themes of poverty, colonialism, and racism. It’s a subversive and surreal gothic, more dark fantasy than outright horror, but with some terrifying and unsettling imagery and scenarios that probably wouldn’t have worked in the hands of a lesser writer.
Elephantasm is criminally overlooked when talking about Lee’s vast bibliography, as well as when talking about 1990s horror fiction and even in discussions of the Dell-Abyss line. It is available currently only as an eBook from Open Road Media. I’m including the cover for both that edition and the vintage paperback below.
