Eric Stenbock

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Eric Stenbock, writer of decadent and macabre fiction and poetry.
Eric Stenbock, writer of decadent and macabre fiction and poetry.

Count Eric Stanislaus (or Stanislaus Eric) Stenbock (March 12, 1858- April 26, 1895) was a Baltic German poet and writer of macabre fantastic fiction.

Stenbock was the count of Bogesund and the heir to an estate near Kolga in Estonia. He was the son of Lucy Sophia Frerichs, a Manchester cotton heiress, and Count Erich Stenbock, of a distinguished Baltic German noble family with Swedish roots which rose to prominence in the service of Gustav Vasa. Stenbock's great-grandfather was Baron Friedrich von Stuart ( 1761-1842) from Courland. Immanuel Kant was great-great-granduncle of count Eric Stenbock.[1]

Stenbock's father died suddenly while he was one year old; his properties were held in trust for him by his grandfather Magnus. Eric's paternal grandfather died while Eric was quite young, also, in 1866, leaving him another trust fund.

Stenbock attended Balliol College in Oxford but never completed his studies. While at Oxford, Eric was deeply influenced by the homosexual Pre-Raphaelite artist and illustrator Simeon Solomon. He is also said to have had a relationship with the composer and conductor Norman O'Neill and with other "young men".[2]

In Oxford, Stenbock also converted to Roman Catholicism taking for himself the name Stanislaus. Some years later Eric also admitted to having tried a different religion every week in Oxford. At the end of his life, he seemed to have developed a syncretist religion containing elements of Catholicism, Buddhism and idolatry.

In 1885, Count Magnus died, upon which Stenbock, as the oldest living male relative, acceded to the status of Count and to the possession of the family's estates in Estonia. Eric traveled to and lived in Kolga for a year and a half; he returned to England in the summer of 1887, during which time he sank deeper into alcoholism and drug addiction.

Stenbock lived in England most of his life, and wrote his works in the English language. He published a number of books of verse during his lifetime, including Love, Sleep, and Dreams, 1881, and Rue, Myrtle, and Cypress (1883). In 1894, Stenbock published The Shadow of Death, his last volume of verse, and Studies of Death, a collection of short stories that were good enough to be the subject of favourable comment by H. P. Lovecraft.

In 1895, Stenbock died, either of cirrhosis of the liver, or from a blow to the head from a fall, at the home of his mother and stepfather, Sir Francis Mowatt, then Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, at Withdeane Hall in Brighton.

The band Current 93 made an album of the same name of incidental music inspired by Stenbock's Faust story. Stenbock's legacy is supported by the invitation only Stenbock Society, notable like Stenbock himself for its infrequent activity. British singer Marc Almond (Soft Cell) with Michael Cashmore released the CD Gabriel & The Lunatic Lover in 2008 with two songs based on Stenbock's poems by the same name.

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Poetry

  • Love, sleep & dreams : a volume of verse. - Oxford : A. Thomas Shrimpton & Son ; Simpkin Marshall & Co, 1881?
  • Myrtle, rue and cypress : a book of poems, songs and sonnets. - London : [privately printed by] Hatchards, 1883
  • The shadow of death : poems, songs, and sonnets. - London : The Leadenhall Press, 1893
  • On the freezing of the Baltic Sea. - [Privately printed for] Timothy d'Arch Smith, 1961
  • The shadow of death ; Studies of death (Degeneration and regeneration : texts of the premodern era). - New York : Garland Pub., 1984
  • Love, sleep & dreams : a volume of verse. - Harleston : Hermitage Books, 1992
  • Myrtle, rue and cypress : a book of poems, songs and sonnets. - Harleston : Hermitage Books, 1992. - Edition of 60 numbered copies
  • The collected poems of Count Stenbock. - London : Durtro, 2001. - Edition of 400 copies. Collects Love, sleep & dreams (1881?), Myrtle, rue and cypress (1883) and The shadow of death (1893). Also includes Ballad of creditors

[edit] Short stories

  • Studies of death : romantic tales (London : David Nutt, 1894)
  • The shadow of death ; Studies of death (Degeneration and regeneration : texts of the premodern era). - New York : Garland Pub., 1984
  • The true story of a vampire. - Edinburgh : Tragara Press, 1989. - Edition of 110 copies
  • Studies of death : romantic tales. - London : Durtro Press, 1996 [1997]. - Edition of 300 numbered copies
  • The child of the soul. - London : Durtro, 1999
  • A secret kept. - London : Durtro Press, 2002. - Edition of 200 copies, wraps
  • The king's bastard or, the triumph of evil. - London : Durtro Press, 2004. - Edition of 200 numbered copies

[edit] Essays

  • The myth of Punch. - London : Durtro Press, 1999. - Edition of 120 numbered copies, wraps

[edit] Plays

  • La Mazurka des Revenants : a serious extravaganza in six parts. - London : Durtro Press, 2002. - Edition of 164 copies, wraps

[edit] Biographies and other

  • Adlard, John. Stenbock, Yeats and the Nineties ; with an hitherto unpublished essay on Stenbock by Arthur Symons and a bibliography by Timothy d'Arch Smith. - London : Cecil & Amelia Woolf, 1969
  • Costelloe, Mary. Christmas with Count Stenbock / [edited by] John Adlard ; frontispiece by Max Beerbohm. -London : Enitharmon, 1980. - Contains letters by Mary Costelloe
  • Reed, Jeremy. A hundred years of disappearance : Count Eric Stenbock. - [Great Britain? : J. Reed, 1995]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Baron Friedrich Stuart, a mysterious man
  2. ^ Gordon, Joan & Hollinger, Veronica (1997), Blood Read: The Vampire As Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 177, ISBN 0812216288 

[edit] External links