'An exquisite book.' - E. M. Forster
'No other novelist of today can recapture more clearly than Mr. Reid the sense of early wonder and adventurous childhood.' - The Times
'An altogether remarkable book.' - Glasgow Herald
Left in the care of his unloving stepmother after his father's death, sixteen-year-old Tom Barber has a vivid dream one night in which he sees his Uncle Stephen, whom he has never met and who is rumoured to have been mixed up in scandal and the practice of black magic. Unhappy at home and not knowing what to expect when he arrives at Uncle Stephen's manor house, Tom runs away, hoping to live with his uncle. In his depiction of Tom's initiation into Uncle Stephen's mystic creed, his illicit love for the poacher Jim Deverell, and his adventures with Philip, a mysterious boy with a strange and fantastic connection to Uncle Stephen's past and Tom's future, Forrest Reid's artistic vision finds its fullest expression.
The first in Reid's Tom Barber trilogy, Uncle Stephen (1931) is both a tale of boyhood adventure in the tradition of Mark Twain and a story of the supernatural in the vein of Sheridan Le Fanu and Walter de la Mare. This new edition of the book E.M. Forster considered Reid's masterpiece features a new introduction by Andrew Doyle along with never before published photographs and archival materials.
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Forrest Reid (1875-1947), the Ulster novelist, spent his life in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, save for a period as an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1908. He numbered among his many friends and acquaintances George William Russell (A. E.), E. M. Forster, Edmund Gosse, C. S. Lewis, and Walter de le Mare, as well as various Uranians such as Theo Bartholomew, Osbert Burdett, and Mark Andre Raffalovich. Despite his sixteen novels, his two autobiographies, and a range of other works, despite being a founding member of the Irish Academy of Letters and an honorary Doctor of Letters of Queen's University in Belfast, despite his novel "Young Tom" being awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Forrest Reid closely borders both oblivion and canonicity. However, this author, who has been aptly dubbed the "Arch-Priest of a Minor Cult," deserves reconsideration and perhaps a place in the pantheon of English letters. "The Tom Barber Trilogy" - composed of the very distinct novels "Uncle Stephen" (1931), "The Retreat; or, The Machinations of Henry" (1936), and "Young Tom; or, Very Mixed Company" (1944) - is Forrest Reid's magnum opus.
Forrest Reid (1875-1947), the Ulster novelist, spent his life in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, save for a period as an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1908. He numbered among his many friends and acquaintances George William Russell (A. E.), E. M. Forster, Edmund Gosse, C. S. Lewis, and Walter de le Mare, as well as various Uranians such as Theo Bartholomew, Osbert Burdett, and Mark Andre Raffalovich. Despite his sixteen novels, his two autobiographies, and a range of other works, despite being a founding member of the Irish Academy of Letters and an honorary Doctor of Letters of Queen's University in Belfast, despite his novel "Young Tom" being awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Forrest Reid closely borders both oblivion and canonicity. However, this author, who has been aptly dubbed the "Arch-Priest of a Minor Cult," deserves reconsideration and perhaps a place in the pantheon of English letters. "The Tom Barber Trilogy" - composed of the very distinct novels "Uncle Stephen" (1931), "The Retreat; or, The Machinations of Henry" (1936), and "Young Tom; or, Very Mixed Company" (1944) - is Forrest Reid's magnum opus.
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