‘HUGH CONWAY has that first essential of the popular novelist—strong narrative power. His story is the first consideration always. Not that he does not possess other attributes to success: graphic description, which carries with it—not necessarily, but certainly in the case of Hugh Conway—atmosphere. He can, too, draw a most convincing character, as the present book will show. We look to Dark Days for a story that will hold our mature minds just as the fireside tales of our grandfathers held us as children—and we get it!’

So began the Editor’s introduction to Collins’ Detective Story Club edition of Dark Days, republished in May 1930 almost 50 years after the story had been devoured by a reading public in love with the work of Hugh Conway. With respect to the Editor, however, ‘narrative power’, ‘graphic description’ and ‘atmosphere’ might have been key for the popular novelist, but they were not by 1930 the most essential ingredients of a successful detective novel. This was the era in which readers craved cerebral ingenuity over dramatic characterisation and saw the emergence of what has since been described (perhaps unfairly) as the ‘humdrum’ school of crime writers. Dark Days was a late Victorian detective story, a novelette with its roots in early Gothic tales and the sensation novels of the 1860s, and was published in a format that owed its existence to the early work of Charles Dickens: the Christmas Annual.

Cheap reading matter had been around for decades in the form of ‘chap books’, unbound leaflets sold by street vendors, usually only eight pages in length, which were so short they led to stories being serialised over multiple issues. By the 1840s, with more widespread literacy and the invention of rotary printing presses which allowed for fast production, the mass distribution of these stories among the working classes took off with the ‘penny bloods’, weekly publications churned out by versatile writers catering for every taste. Illustrated with a black-and-white engraving on the first page, these serialised adventures rapidly turned from swashbuckling tales of pirates and highwaymen to more outlandish and thrilling themes—and increasingly towards stories of crime and murder. One of the most notorious and most popular run of ‘bloods’ narrated the exploits of the murderous Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, whose victims ended up in meat-pies: The String of Pearls began publication in 1846 and ran for 18 weeks, inspiring many similar sensationalised crime stories that unashamedly blurred the boundaries of true crime and heady fiction, some of which ran for months on end.

One of the finer Victorian traditions that grew out of this appetite for serial fiction was the Annual, in which publishers of serials and periodicals would release special Christmas editions outside their normal run, enticing new readers with one-off short stories, cartoons and festive humour. Seasonal ghost stories were especially popular, as were mysteries, and standalone short stories began to flourish as a result. Major book publishers such as Routledge’s also issued special Christmas Annuals, with more sophisticated novella-length content, although price was critical. The real foundation of the Annual as a British publishing phenomenon can be traced back to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, surely the most enduring Christmas story of modern times.

Dickens began writing his ‘little carol’ in October 1843, finishing it by the end of November, in time to be published for Christmas with hand-coloured illustrations by John Leech. Financing the printing of 10,000 copies himself after a disagreement with his publishers, the book was nevertheless far from the success its author had hoped for. ‘The first 6,000 copies show a profit of £230 and the last four will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul on a thousand clear,’ Dickens wrote. The price of five shillings, even for a lavishly bound book as this was, was too expensive for most pockets, but the story grew in popularity and did not deter him from writing more Christmas novellas: The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain followed over the next five years, and as the prices were dropped from shillings to just pence, sales grew from ten thousand to hundreds of thousands.

With the Christmas Annual having established itself as a regular fixture of the publishing calendar, an unlikely benefactor was 33-year-old Bristol auctioneer Frederick John Fargus. Under the pseudonym ‘Hugh Conway’, his first published story, ‘The Daughter of the Stars’, appeared in Thirteen at Dinner and What Came of It, the first Christmas Annual from local publisher J.W. Arrowsmith in 1881. A rapid succession of songs, poems and stories by Conway followed in various publications over the next two years, culminating in the short novel Called Back, which formed the basis of Arrowsmith’s third Christmas Annual in 1883. Having sold an unremarkable 3,000 copies by Christmas—barely half its initial print run—no one can have predicted that by 1887 it would have gone on to sell a staggering 350,000 copies and been translated into all the major European languages. As Graham Law observes in his excellent article ‘Poor Fargus’ for The Wilkie Collins Journal in 2000, this sudden turn of events seems to have been precipitated by an enthusiastic review on 3 January 1884 in Henry Labouchère’s widely-read society weekly, Truth:

‘Who Arrowsmith is and who Hugh Conway is I do not know, nor had I ever heard of the Christmas Annual of the former, or of the latter as a writer of fiction; but, a week or two ago, a friend of mine said to me, “Buy Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual, if you want to read one of the best stories that have appeared for many a year.” A few days ago, I happened to be at the Waterloo Station waiting for a train. I remembered the advice, and asked the clerk at the bookstall for the Annual. He handed it to me, and remarked, “They say the story is very good, but this is only the third copy I have sold.” It was so foggy that I could not read it in the train as I had intended, so I put the book into my pocket. About 2 that night, it occurred to me that it was nearing the hour when decent, quiet people go to bed. I saw the Annual staring me in the face, and took it up. Well, not until 4.30 did I get to bed. By that time I had finished the story. Had I not, I should have gone on reading. I agree with my friend—nay, I go farther than him, and say that Wilkie Collins never penned a more enthralling story.’

Spurred on by his new-found fame, Hugh Conway wrote a vast amount of new fiction in 1884, including a highly regarded full-length novel, A Family Affair. But it was his two subsequent Annuals for Arrowsmith that cemented his reputation as a bestseller: Dark Days in 1884 and Slings and Arrows, published posthumously in 1885. For, as detailed in Martin Edwards’ informative introduction to Called Back, also in this series, the author died in Monte Carlo on 15 May 1885, aged only 37. He had been writing for only four years.

Dark Days was particularly successful: it was widely translated and like Called Back there was a stage play to help increase its longevity. It also attracted an unlikely champion. Within weeks of its appearance, a parody entitled Much Darker Days by the noted Scottish author, literary critic and folklorist Andrew Lang was published by Longmans, Green & Co. under the pseudonym ‘A. Huge Longway’. Lang was active as a journalist and was the literary editor of Longman’s Magazine, and clearly saw an opportunity to capitalise on Conway’s success by publishing his biting satire. Interestingly, a second edition published the following April contained what was tantamount to an apology, seemingly for causing offence:

‘Parody is a parasitical, but should not be a poisonous, plant. The Author of this unassuming jape has learned, with surprise and regret, that some sentences which it contains are thought even more vexatious than frivolous. To frivol, not to vex, was his aim, and he has corrected this edition accordingly.’

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