Claude Houghton

This Was Ivor Trent Claude Houghton

"An extremely interesting novelist, and a genuinely original one." - J. B. Priestley

"One of the most interesting and one of the most important novelists now writing in England." - Hugh Walpole

"At his best, he writes as well as any living man." - L. A. G. Strong

One dark, foggy night, the eminent novelist Ivor Trent is on his way to a flat in a sordid London lodging house where he plans to begin work on his newest book, undisturbed by his friends, who all believe him to have gone abroad. On his way there, he glimpses a figure in the fog and is struck with terror when he realizes it is a man from the future. He collapses on the front step of the house, where the proprietor finds him, raving and delirious. Meanwhile, Arthur Rendell, a lonely widower who found solace in one of Trent's novels, determines to find out more about the writer and takes a room in the same house, where he meets Trent's friends, associates, and lovers. To Rosalie Vivian, Trent is a god; to Vera Thornton, he is a devil; to Denis Wrayburn, he heralds a new race of supermen. But who is Ivor Trent, really? And what is the explanation of the terrible vision he experienced in the fog? Rendell intends to find out, but he is unprepared for the devastating truth.

Expanding on the themes first explored in his masterpiece I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930) (also available from Valancourt Books), This Was Ivor Trent (1935) was a success in both England and America and was one of the best-known novels of Claude Houghton (1889-1961). Though admired by writers as diverse as P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Miller, J. B. Priestley, and Graham Greene, Houghton has fallen into neglect in the past half-century and awaits rediscovery by a new generation of readers. This edition is newly typeset from the first London edition and includes a new introduction by Mark Valentine.