Finney, Charles G.

The Circus Of Doctor Lao.

Grey Walls Press: London. 1948. First British edition (& 1st printing). Hardcover.

Weird fantasy about a circus visiting a small town in Arizona: wonderful cover art and interior full-page illustrations by Gordon Noel Fish. Made into a film (7 FACES OF DR LAO) in 1964.

''remembered mainly for his first novel, THE CIRCUS OF DOCTOR LAO: in writing the story, he was clearly influenced by his military service (he had served 1927-30 in China). To Abalone, Arizona, sometime early in the 20th century, comes Dr Lao's circus, announced beforehand by a poster claiming that visitors will be able to see a chimera, Medusa, Merlin, a mermaid, Pan, the Loch Ness monster, a sphinx, a unicorn and a werewolf. The three caravans arrive, seemingly from nowhere, and disgorge far more than they seem capable of containing. The circus begins; discords soon mount between the small-town Abalonians and the creatures on display. Dr Lao himself is a trickster, and seems immortal, though the denizens of his circus show the signs of thinning natural to creatures of myth locked into a secular world. Soon the show turns into a black revel, and before the night is out eleven humans are dead. The climax, the human sacrifice of a virgin to the ancient God of a Lost Land passes quickly, the promise that Lao's libidinously evocative creatures will liberate Arizona fades, and the circus leaves. The movie version, 7 FACES OF DR LAO (1964) introduces new protagonists and a plot with a more ''congenial'' ending, and allows the inference that the denizens of the circus may be projections of Dr Lao's own being. The book has been deeply influential on writers like Ray Bradbury, whose small towns owe much to Dr Lao, and Peter S. Beagle, whose circus in The Last Unicorn (1968) reads as a direct homage. Finney was perhaps the first US writer to depict the marvellous and the uncanny in terms so mercilessly and hauntingly deadpan'' (John Clute/Encyclopedia of Fantasy). VG+ copy in a VG+ (bright, unfaded wraparound) pictorial dustjacket, with a little reinforcement tape at the top and bottom of the spine panel on the reverse of the dustjacket (ie. not showing).

Price: £350.00

Item #07851