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Visiak, E H

Working name of UK poet, critic (a noted Milton scholar) and author Edward Harold Physick (1878-1972). His fiction – like The Haunted Island (1910) [for subtitles see Checklist], a complex tale featuring ghosts, Magic and piracy – is essentially fantasy, although Medusa: A Story of Mystery, and Ecstasy, & Strange Horror (1929), an almost surreal Fantastic Voyage into unknown seas, gives the eponymous South Pacific sea Monster, which dwells in a vast hole Under the Sea, an sf-like rationale. "The Shadow", a good surrealist ghost novella, appeared in Crimes, Creeps and Thrills (anth 1936) edited by John Gawsworth. Visiak's personal knowledge of Joseph Conrad is reflected in the nonfiction The Mirror of Conrad (1955); as a friend of David Lindsay, who had strongly influenced his own fiction, he contributed an essay to The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (anth 1970; vt The Haunted Man 1979). [JC/PN]

Edward Harold Physick

born Ealing, Middlesex: 20 July 1878

died Hove, Brighton and Hove: 30 August 1972

works

• The Haunted Island: A Pirate Romance (London: Elkin Mathews, 1910) [hb/]
  • The Haunted Island: Being the History of an Adventure to an Island in the Remote South Seas: Of a Wizard There: of his Pirate Gang; his Treasure; his Combustible; His Skeleton Antic Lad: Of his Wisdom; of his Poesy; his Barbarous Cruelty; his Mighty Power: Of a Volcano on the Island: And of the Ghostly Terror (London: Peter Lunn, 1946) [vt of the above: illus/hb/Jack Matthews]
• Medusa: A Story of Mystery, and Ecstasy, & Strange Horror (London: Victor Gollancz, 1929) [hb/nonpictorial]
  • Medusa (Lakewood, Colorado: Centipede Press, 2011) [exp as coll: with thirteen stories added: introduction by Colin Wilson: hb/from Théodore Géricault]

nonfiction (selected)

• The Mirror of Conrad (London: Werner Laurie, 1955) [nonfiction: Joseph Conrad: hb/]
• The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (London: John Baker, 1970) with Colin Wilson and J B Pick [nonfiction: David Lindsay: hb/nonpictorial]
  • The Haunted Man (San Bernardino, California: The Borgo Press, 1979) with Colin Wilson and J B Pick [nonfiction: vt of the above: David Lindsay: hb/]

about the author

• Anthony Harrison-Barbet. E H Visiak: Writer and Mystic (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: Pauper's Press, 2007) [nonfiction: pb/]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Project Gutenberg
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 13:38 pm on 11 February 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/visiak_e_h>