Beck, L Adams
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
Primary working name of UK-born author born Elizabeth Louisa Moresby (1862-1931), most of whose life was spent in various lands, including China and Japan; primarily in Canada from 1919; as well as L or Lily Adams Beck, she published under various iterations of her name (her second marriage was to Ralph Coker Adams Beck) including Elizabeth Louisa Beck, Elizabeth Louisa Moresby Beck, Louis Moresby and Lily Moresby Adams; she also published as by E Barrington. In general her work – which inclines to easily-assimilated affinities with supernatural mysteries of the East, and is tinged with Theosophy – is not sf; but some sf topoi are sometimes interwoven into her tapestry of concerns, as in The Way of Stars: A Romance of Reincarnation (1925), which incorporates elements of mysticism (see Reincarnation) and recollections of Atlantis into a Future War narrative. Some hints of a Lost Race infiltrate other concerns in the title novella of The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories (coll 1922) and its sequel in the Ninth Vibration sequence, The House of Fulfilment: The Romance of a Soul (1927). For her fantasies, which usually combine the occult and oriental Weltschmerz, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below. [JC]
Elizabeth Louisa Moresby Adams Beck
born 1862
died Kyoto, Japan: 3 January 1931
works (highly selected)
Ninth Vibration
- The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922) [Ninth Vibration: hb/]
- The House of Fulfilment: The Romance of a Soul (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1927) [Ninth Vibration: hb/]
individual titles
- The Way of Stars: A Romance of Reincarnation (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925) [hb/signature not deciphered]
links
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Project Gutenberg
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: L Adams Beck
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry