The Lost Traveller

An obvious judgment upon Ruthven Todd is that he has lived more lives than one. He is one of the world's authorities on William Blake, and has made many contributions that have revolutionized Blake studies. He is also a historian of science, one of the first to explore the strange world of early 19th-century Romantic science. He is also one of the foremost living poets, once a member of Dylan Thomas's circle, and during the 1930's he was one of the guiding personalities of the surrealistic movement.

"The Lost Traveller" unifies these various focal points, and also demonstrates that Mr. Todd is a novelist. Published in England in 1943 by the Grey Walls Press in an edition of 1000 copies because of paper shortages, it received little circulation, although the few critics who saw copies praised it highly. A book of almost legendary rarity, it has since come to have a large, enthusiastic word-of-mouth reputation that has steadily grown.

In some respects "The Lost Traveller" is a science-fiction novel, in others it is one of the very few surrealistic novels in English. It is a highly poetic, filled with dazzling heights of imagination and verbal felicities; and it is also as existential and ultimate in its concerns as Blake himself. Concerned with the adventures of Christopher, a young man precipitated through strange dimensions into a land of unreason, it is packed full of fictional concepts, brilliant fantasy, and provocative ideas. It is also a shocking novel, not in the sense of being sensational, but in presenting certain situations that are so strong, so archetypal that they will remain with you for years. That has been our own experience.

--------------------- from the back cover.