L·T·C·ROLT

Sleep No More

Re-issued by The History Press in January 2010.
First published by Constable in 1948.
How to buy

"Tom Rolt's centenary in 2010 sees the re-issue of a tranche of his many books, revealing his passions, obsessions and intricate knowledge of whatever subject he was turning his had to at the time.

There was nothing flowery about Tom Rolt, though he indulged a different side of himself by writing some cracking short ghost stories, as in Sleep no more: Railway Canal and Other Stories of the Supernatural".
Susan Hill in The Lady

Rolt, writing in Landscape With Figures, describes the publisher's reception of the manuscript for Sleep No More:

"Michael Sadleir’s reception of this modest collection of stories was so extravagant that it quite went to my head. He hailed me as the successor to M R James whose Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary I first read at the age of eight and at five yearly intervals ever since."

"It (Sleep no More) was a slim mouse of a book... whose inferior paper soon yellowed. It was never reprinted although some stories were subsequently anthologized and others read over the radio."

The 2010 edition of Sleep No More does not suffer any of the deficiencies Tom described, and represents a very welcome addition to the books in print.