Writing Madness

***FINALIST FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD***    ***WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD***     First Edition, 2017.     A fine, still sealed copy in a fine dust jacket. Limited to 300 copies, each signed by Patrick McGrath, Joyce Carol Oates, Harry Brockway, and Danel Olson. Bound in full black Cialux cloth. Two colorprinting throughout. Ribbon marker. Printed endsheets. Red top edge-stain. Head and tail bands. Introductory essay by Oates, endnote by Olson, illustrated by Brockway.         Features the complete contents of McGrath's brilliant 1987 debut collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, the three novellas ofGhost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now, six previously uncollected short stories, seven essays, and over twenty of McGrath's insightful and engaging introductions and book reviews.           For thirty years Patrick McGrath's novels have received high critical acclaim worldwide, and won prizes internationally, but Writing Madness is the first large-scale collection of his short fiction oeuvre. Son of Broadmoor Hospital's longest serving medical superintendent, McGrath offers his account of childhood in the shadow of the walls of Britain's largest top-security mental hospital, "A Boy's Broadmoor," along with an astonishing account of a bizarre true-life tragedy, "Death of a Silent Twin," and many more.          Printed with the highest Italian craftsmanship by the same Bortolazzi family publishers of Verona (est. 1953) who crafted Helmut Newton's photography book SUMO for Taschen (1999), which weighed 66 pounds, immediately sold out, and had its autographed copy #1 fetch the highest auction price of any new book of the 20th century ($430,000). Writing Madness is only the third volume manufactured by the esteemed Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei for Centipede Press, the others being Clark Ashton Smith's The Averoigne Chronicles (2016) and Men of Wealth and Taste: Michael Joseph's Photographs of The Rolling Stones (2015).   Includes several photos of McGrath. Illustrated with seven original commissioned engravings (including the cover) from the inimitable Glastonbury engraver/tombstone carver Harry Brockway known best via his engravings for The Folio Society. Graced with preface by Gothic master Joyce Carol Oates, edited by World Fantasy Award-winning Gothic professor Danel Olson, and called "sumptuous" by The Washington Post (4 July 2017), Writing Madness signals an Italian-British-American literary event.

About the Author

Goethe once observed that "We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe," a subject London-born Patrick McGrath has explored since the 1980s.    His novels have inspired direction from David Cronenberg and others (turned into the films The Grotesque, Asylum, and Spider), with screen performances from Sting, Alan Bates, Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Theresa Russell, Sean Harris, and Ian McKellen. His most recent novel probes fascism in 1947 London, The Wardrobe Mistress (Penguin, 320 pp., 2017).   The smaller canvases of his Gothic short fictions are now all collected (along with occasional pieces on horror, psychology, mentors & monsters) in Writing Madness with prints of new engravings by Harry Brockway (Centipede Press, 600 pp., 2017). Praising this complete collection, English playwright, fiction writer and actor Reggie Oliver notes: "Can thoroughly recommend Writing Madness a superb volume, beautifully produced. McGrath is an exceptional writer. His stories and his essays are highly original. Very good essay on his work in the volume by Danel Olson. Fine illustrations. It just can't be faulted."

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