A career in fantastic and popular fiction
Shiel was born on Montserrat in 1865 and completed schooling on Barbados before establishing a writing career in Britain. Teaching and editorial work helped support him. Prince Zaleski and Shapes in the Fire introduced ornate detective and horror fiction; popular serials such as The Yellow Danger brought commercial success through racist fears of conflict between Europe and Asia.
The Purple Cloud appeared in 1901. In 1914 he was convicted of sexual offences against his partner’s twelve-year-old daughter and sentenced to sixteen months in prison. John Gawsworth later helped secure a Civil List pension and collaborated on unfinished stories. Shiel continued religious and literary projects into old age and died in 1947.
Solitude narrated through several voices
The retained Purple Cloud has no verified historical printing date. Its opening frames the principal account through a doctor’s papers and a woman’s trance speech. These are fictional devices that place reported witnessing and transcription between the traveller and the reader.
Polar equipment, dogs and navigation give the journey material detail. But silence becomes oppressive enough for the narrator to mistreat a companion animal simply to hear a sound. Later, abandoned supplies and explosives enable elaborate plans of luxury and destruction. The absence of an answering human voice makes his explanations increasingly unstable. An inventory that once concerned survival becomes a means of control and display. Shiel’s catastrophe exposes what the survivor does with an emptied civilisation, as well as how he describes those actions.
