(Still fascinated by the fact that L. M. Montgomery just blithely gave the heroine of her realistic novel psychic powers. Does anyone have a read on when an author could no longer get away with this? In the 1930s, Mary Grant Bruce in the Billabong series elaborates an entire theory about how telepathy is kind of like radio, actually.)
Sayers' Murder Must Advertise (1933) has an apparent drug-induced flash of telepathy on the part of one of the antagonists, when she perceives a hanged man inside Wimsey's thoughts: he is pursuing her as a lead on a murder investigation.
I have almost certainly mentioned it before, but the title of Margery Allingham's The Mind Readers (1965) absolutely means. It feels to me more of a piece with the parapsychology of the 1960's, however, than any kind of holdover from Montgomery's period.
Perhaps Montgomery (like Emily when she conceives A Seller of Dreams) was simply so possessed by the idea of Valancy that she just had to put her trilogy aside for a bit to work the story out.
I believe it was actually in conversation with you however many aaagh seven years ago that the likeness between Barney Snaith and Dean Priest clicked into focus for me, after which it made a lot of sense to find out that Montgomery had written The Blue Castle while stalled on Emily's Quest: I had wondered if it was an accident of personal archetype, but in context of the timeline feels a lot more like a kind of self-AU.
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Sayers' Murder Must Advertise (1933) has an apparent drug-induced flash of telepathy on the part of one of the antagonists, when she perceives a hanged man inside Wimsey's thoughts: he is pursuing her as a lead on a murder investigation.
I have almost certainly mentioned it before, but the title of Margery Allingham's The Mind Readers (1965) absolutely means. It feels to me more of a piece with the parapsychology of the 1960's, however, than any kind of holdover from Montgomery's period.
Perhaps Montgomery (like Emily when she conceives A Seller of Dreams) was simply so possessed by the idea of Valancy that she just had to put her trilogy aside for a bit to work the story out.
I believe it was actually in conversation with you however many aaagh seven years ago that the likeness between Barney Snaith and Dean Priest clicked into focus for me, after which it made a lot of sense to find out that Montgomery had written The Blue Castle while stalled on Emily's Quest: I had wondered if it was an accident of personal archetype, but in context of the timeline feels a lot more like a kind of self-AU.