David Stuart Davies (1946-2024)

Regular readers of our blog will be sad to hear that our old friend David Stuart Davies passed away in August.

The association with Wordsworth of David and his wife Kathryn dates back to the late 1990s, the days of the £1 classic paperback, when Kathryn contributed an introduction to our edition of Agnes Grey, and David drew upon his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Sherlockian to add introductions to several of our Conan Doyle titles, as well as compiling collections such as Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century.

David’s next project for us was an altogether more ambitious one, when he became the editor of our Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural series in 2006, selecting the titles and adding introductions to many, as did Kathryn. Basing his selections on classics that had become difficult to find, the series attracted much praise from devotees of the genres and titles continued to be added until 2014. Unfortunately, once fans of the series had purchased their copies, the general public were less enthusiastic and many of the titles drifted out of print. David was delighted to hear that 2024 would see the first new title in the series for ten years with a collection of tales by Arthur Machen, but sadly illness prevented him working on the project.

in 2013, we launched a new website which featured a blog section, and David quickly got the call to contribute. His first assignments were obvious ones, based on the Sherlock Holmes books, and soon moving on to the titles in the Mystery and the Supernatural series, with a diversion into Science Fiction. David’s knowledge of the books was nicely supplemented by his knowledge of the cinema, so that his articles were often enhanced by a quick guide to the major film adaptations of the book in question.

David was a dream to work with, producing beautifully rounded pieces on an increasingly diverse selection of books, which became to subject of some amusement. Kathryn recalls that David loved ‘the fun he had exploring new writers and rediscovering old ones in the challenges you set for him. He’d say with a gleeful twinkle, ‘Derek’s been in touch and it’s [insert name of author here] this time!”. The deal was always that if I subjected David to a couple of testing books in a row, I’d let him pick one of his favourites to make up for it.

Such was David’s prodigious output that he contributed over 150 articles over the years, and allowed me to build up a small reserve to help smooth the flow of new blogs, and I will be using these final few articles in the coming weeks by way of a tribute.

Much more information about David’s life and works, including the many books, he wrote can be found here: David-Stuart-Davies.muchloved.com 

Between Two Worlds: The Weird Tales of Arthur Machen will be published in October 2024, and will be dedicated to David.