Oliver Onions (writer)

Oliver Onions (1915)

Oliver Onions , since 1918 his real name George Oliver (born November 13, 1873 in Bradford , England , † April 9, 1961 in Aberystwyth , Wales ) was a British writer. He published around 40 novels and collections of short stories .

Life

Oliver Onions, who was born as the son of a bank clerk in the northern English county of Yorkshire , studied art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 1894 to 1897 , followed by a one-year stay in Paris . Back in England, he first worked as a poster designer and illustrator of books and magazines. In his first books The Compleat Bachelor (1900) and Tales from a Far Riding (1902) he collected short stories that he had previously published in magazines. He illustrated both books himself. In 1903 he published his first novel (The Odd-Job Man) , which was followed by more. In 1909 Onions married the then largely unknown Berta Ruck , whose career as a writer he significantly promoted. The couple had two sons Arthur (* 1912) and William (* 1913), the family's residence was initially in Henley-on-Thames , then (until 1939) in Hampstead in what was then the County of London .

With his collection of novels Widdershins , which was a great success with the critics, Oliver Onions made his breakthrough in 1911. His detective novel In Accordance with the Evidence , which was reprinted several times and was most recently published in 1976 by Garland Publishing (New York) as part of the Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950 series, was equally successful the following year . Onions suffered from his family name (English for "onions") since childhood. Contrary to the usual usage in his relatives, he tried to enforce a pronunciation with a stretched initial vowel ([ ˈoːʊnjənz ] instead of [ ˈʌnjənz ]). To spare his sons the teasing he had experienced as a child, he took the first name George in 1918 and the surname Oliver with his family . Since he was already known as a writer at that time, he continued to publish exclusively under his previous name.

In 1939 Onions and his wife moved their residence from the London metropolitan area to the Welsh seaside resort of Aberdyfi . His historical novel Poor Man's Tapestry , published in 1946, received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the oldest British literary prize. He published his last novel during his lifetime in 1952 (A Penny for the Harp) . At the age of 87, Oliver Onions died in an Aberystwyth hospital , which was located near his home in Aberdyfi. In 1965, his widow published the unfinished novel A Shilling to Spend from his estate .

meaning

Oliver Onions' novels mainly belong to the genres of historical novels , detective novels , thriller and horror fiction , and he created a science fiction novel with The New Moon (1918). His novella-like ghost stories , which he originally published in the three collections Widdershins (1911), Ghosts in Daylight (1924) and The Painted Face (1929) and which have been reprinted several times in various compilations, became particularly important . His most famous work is the ghost novel The Beckoning Fair One (German title Die enticing Schöne ) from Widdershins , which was included in numerous anthologies and published in 1968 by 20th Century Fox for American and British television (with Robert Lansing and John Fraser ) was filmed. In literary studies, the portrayal of obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia in Onions' novels is particularly remarkable. Selected novellas onions appeared in German translation in two volumes in the 1980s.

Trivia

The Italian pop music duo Guido & Maurizio De Angelis used the pseudonym Oliver Onions at times .

Works (selection)

• The Compleat Bachelor. John Murray, London 1900
• Tales from a Far Riding. John Murray, London 1902
• The Odd-Job Man. John Murray, London 1903
• Ramsons. Martin Secker, London 1911 (numerous reprints, most recently by Chatto & Windus, London 1968)
• In Accordance with the Evidence. Martin Secker, London 1912 (reprints 1915, 1925, 1968, most recently by Garland Publishing, New York 1976, ISBN 0-8240-2388-9 )
• The New Moon. A Romance of Reconstruction. Hodder and Stoughton, London / New York 1918
• Ghosts in Daylight. Chapman & Hall, London 1924
• The Painted Face. William Heinemann, London 1929
• The open secret. William Heinemann, London 1930 (also: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1931)
• The Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions. Nicholson and Watson, London 1935 (reprinted in Dover, New York 1971)
• The Hand of Cornelius Voyt. Hamish Hamilton. London 1939 (Reprinted by Lythway Press, Portway 1969, ISBN 0-85046-039-5 )
• Poor Man's Tapestry. Michael Joseph, London 1946 (reprint 1966, last 1973, ISBN 0-718-11146-X )
• A penny for the harp. Michael Joseph, London 1952
• A shilling to spend. Michael Joseph, London 1965

German translations

• The painted face. Fantastic stories. Bastei-Verlag Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1982, ISBN 3-404-72018-0
• The alluring beauty. Haunted and other stories about love from the afterlife. Bastei-Verlag Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1984, ISBN 3-404-72036-9

literature

• Gunnar Schmidt: The literarization of the unconscious. Studies on the fantastic stories of Oliver Onions and Vernon Lee. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-8204-5367-9
• Leonard RN Ashley: Onions, (George) Oliver (1873-1961). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 41: Norbury – Osborn. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861391-1 , pp. 872f., ( Oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Web links

Commons : Oliver Onions  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Oliver Onions in the catalog of the German National Library
• Oliver Onions in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gunnar Schmidt: The literarization of the unconscious. Studies on the fantastic stories of Oliver Onions and Vernon Lee. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1984, pp. 49-93