Dennis Arthur Parry (7November 1912 – 21June 1955) was a British novelist. He died early as a result of a road accident, and none of his books were ever reprinted beyond a first edition until Valancourt Books reprinted The Survivor (ISBN978-1941147368) and Sea of Glass (ISBN978-1941147115), in 2014-2015.[1]
Critical reception
Kirkus Reviews said of The Survivor: "An original and piquant idea, which can stand on its own feet without the link the publishers make for it to Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, etc. ... A strangely fascinating tale, but too uncanonical to appeal to as wide a public as predicted, I fear."[2]
A review of Sea of Glass published in The Times on 19 May 1955, a month before Parry's death, said that "Mr Parry writes with wit, ingenuity, and even a gift for surrealistic fantasy." (The same review also briefly noted "An unusual little fiction ... written by a 19-year-old girl from the Dordogne ... a nice piece of precosity": Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse).[3] A reviewer in The Spectator was more critical: "A ramshackle plot has been assembled around a clutter of eccentrics ... all this energy, all this talent one feels needs more organisation than Mr Parry seems prepared to bring to them."[4]
His obituary in The Times described him as "author of a number of novels which have won both popular favour and critical acclaim".[5]
Bibliography
Attic Meteor (1936)
The Bishop's Move, the Autobiography of Dio Lord Bishop of Melitene, Freely Translated from the Lost Original by Dennis Parry and H.M. Champness (1938, with H. M. Champness)
The Survivor (1940)
Atalanta's Case (1945)
Mooncalf (1947)
Outward Be Fair (1949)
Fair House of Joy (1950)
Going Up - Going Down (1953)
Horseman, Pass By (1954)
Sea of Glass (1955, published in the US as Varvara, 1956)