Description:
This is the story of Jenny Flower, London slum child, who one day, on an outing to the country, meets a Dark Stranger with horns on his head. It is the first day of August-Lammas-a witches' sabbath.
Brief description: Ethel ManninEthel Mannin (1900-1984) was a best-selling author born and bred in South London. Her first novel, Martha, was published in 1923, having first been entered in a writing competition. She continued to write at an astonishing pace, producing over fifty novels during her long career, plus multiple volumes of short stories, autobiographies, travel and political writing. Mannin was also a lifelong socialist, feminist, and anti-fascist. She died in Devon at the age of 84.
Review Quotes:
"It is not surprising that this book was deemed unsuitable for 1940s Ireland. The allure of Lucifer and the occult would certainly have been deemed inappropriate, as would the depictions of female sexuality." - Dublin Inquirer
"Mannin's prose is usually crisp and lively . . . we are in the hands of a talented professional novelist with an interesting mind." - Reggie Oliver, Wormwood
"There are few books of which it justly can be said, that having read it will leave a reader changed. Thought-provoked, conscience-smitten, challenged. Lucifer and the Devil is one of them." - Albert Power
"In the hands of Mannin's contemporary writers of supernatural and horror this novel might have become a lurid piece filled gruesome scenes and nightmarish apparitions. But as Mannin would have it the horror is more subtle, heart-wrenching rather than blood spilling. We watch the irrevocable destruction of a soul, the dissolution of friendships, and a fulfillment of what amounts to a fatalistic worldview." - Pretty Sinister
"Miss Mannin's treatment of her theme is unflinchingly realistic . . . Jenny is a very convincing bad child." - L. P. Hartley, The Sketch
"The story grips the imagination from beginning to end." - Daily Telegraph
"[Mannin] conveys all the lure and all the horror of witchcraft; and keeps, at the same time, her customary hold on the realities of human character. This is a strange, but gripping book." - Irish Times
"Mannin gives us a sensitively wrought study of an enigma, half child, half witch. I found the story of Jenny Flower and her association with the Dark Stranger absorbing." - Britannia and Eve
"Lucifer and the Child is a strange mixture of fantasy and realism." - The Scotsman