Description

"[P]robably the most distinguished writer of English prose in the novel form at present living. He cannot do other than write beautifully." - Humbert Wolfe

"The book abounds in glowing experiences of a world of colour and sensation, minutely imagined. . . . The description of dawn at Kew Gardens is so lovely that the reader will be tempted to endanger his respectability by emulating Judy and climbing the wall." - Times Literary Supplement

"Among the few highly important and significant novelists of the day." - The Observer

"There is poetry beneath Mr. Fraser's fantastic humour as there is a cunning grace in his prose." - The Times

"The erotic awakening of a young woman . . . Judy, a student at Kew Gardens . . . is engaged to a personable young man who does not have the ability to arouse her, though she likes him, and she is disturbed by the utilitarian, materialistic life-philosophy of her businessman brother. She becomes more and more sensitive to the hidden life of the plants at Kew, and comes to see them as personalities, with the giant orchid in the role of passionate lover. . . . Told with delicate imagery and fine perceptions, a minor rococoism of art deco literature." - E.F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983)

This first-ever reprinting of Flower Phantoms (1926), the best-known novel by Ronald Fraser (1888-1974), features a new introduction by Mark Valentine.