Sailor, photographer and writer
Hodgson was born in Essex in 1877 and went to sea as a young man. Shipboard life supplied material for stories and poems, including the sea’s violence and the vulnerability of people far from help. On returning to Britain he tried earning a living through physical training and photography before establishing himself as a writer.
The Boats of the Glen Carrig appeared in 1907, followed by The Ghost Pirates and other fantastic fiction. His novels and stories gained readers without bringing secure finances. He married in 1913 and later served in the First World War. He was killed near Ypres in April 1918, leaving work that continued to appear after his death.
Two scales of danger
The Night Land, first published in 1912, imagines a dark future through which a traveller searches for the person he loves. Its subtitle, A Love Tale, gives the immense landscape a personal purpose. Lumitheca holds the abridged 1921 edition. Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder works at the scale of individual investigations. The detective recounts cases over dinner, describing testimony, practical precautions and encounters that resist explanation. His attention to procedures gives the stories their distinctive balance of investigation and supernatural threat.
