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Openers of the Gate
-The Openers of the Gate-Lord Killary-How Felicity Came Home-Waste Manor-The Mystery of Iniquity-Many Waters Cannot Quench Love-The Horoscope-The Thug-Hell-The Man Who Saw.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
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About the author
L. Adams Beck
67 books4 followersPseudonym of Elizabeth Louisa Moresby.
Elizabeth Louisa "Lily" Moresby was born on late 1862 in Queenstown, Cork, Ireland, UK, the second child of Irish Jane Willis (Scott) and English John Moresby, a Royal Navy Captain who explored the coast of New Guinea and was the first European to discover the site of Port Moresby. She was grand-daughter of Eliza Louisa and Fairfax Moresby. She had a eldest brother Walter Halliday, and four youngest sisters Ethel Fortescue, Georgina, Hilda Fairfax and Gladys Moresby. Due to he father's work and her marriage to a Royal Navy commander Edward Western Hodgkinson, she lived and traveled widely in the East, in Egypt, India, China, Tibet, and Japan. Asian culture would greatly influence her and became a staunch Buddhist. She collabored in the writing of her father's book. Two Admirals: Sir John Moresby and John Moresby (1909).
After widowing around 1910, she remarried in 1912 to retired solicitor Ralph Coker Adams Beck. In 1919, the marriage visit Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she settled alone eventually. Surrounded by her Oriental art and Oriental servants, she entertained fortnightly at her home on Mountjoy Avenue in Oak Bay as a strict vegetarian with ascetic inclinations.
She began her writing career publishing short-stories for Newspapers and Magazzines. She was 60 years old by the time she started to publishing her first books. She used various pen names such as L. Adams Beck for books in oriental setting or about esoteric themes, E. Barrington for novelized biographies of British historical figures, and Louis Moresby for novles set in exotic locales.
She returned to Asia, and continued to write until her death on 3 January 1931 in Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, Japan.
Elizabeth Louisa "Lily" Moresby was born on late 1862 in Queenstown, Cork, Ireland, UK, the second child of Irish Jane Willis (Scott) and English John Moresby, a Royal Navy Captain who explored the coast of New Guinea and was the first European to discover the site of Port Moresby. She was grand-daughter of Eliza Louisa and Fairfax Moresby. She had a eldest brother Walter Halliday, and four youngest sisters Ethel Fortescue, Georgina, Hilda Fairfax and Gladys Moresby. Due to he father's work and her marriage to a Royal Navy commander Edward Western Hodgkinson, she lived and traveled widely in the East, in Egypt, India, China, Tibet, and Japan. Asian culture would greatly influence her and became a staunch Buddhist. She collabored in the writing of her father's book. Two Admirals: Sir John Moresby and John Moresby (1909).
After widowing around 1910, she remarried in 1912 to retired solicitor Ralph Coker Adams Beck. In 1919, the marriage visit Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she settled alone eventually. Surrounded by her Oriental art and Oriental servants, she entertained fortnightly at her home on Mountjoy Avenue in Oak Bay as a strict vegetarian with ascetic inclinations.
She began her writing career publishing short-stories for Newspapers and Magazzines. She was 60 years old by the time she started to publishing her first books. She used various pen names such as L. Adams Beck for books in oriental setting or about esoteric themes, E. Barrington for novelized biographies of British historical figures, and Louis Moresby for novles set in exotic locales.
She returned to Asia, and continued to write until her death on 3 January 1931 in Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, Japan.
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August 28, 2009
After the fifth story, I felt like I was reading the same story again and again...or at least stories that rehashed the same ideas over and over again. So even while I liked the basic story template here, I didn't finish the whole book. Perhaps sometime I will. It was repetition that stopped me. I have one additional warning to modern readers - prepare for periodic but persistent racism. Written by a white European woman in the early 20th century, who purported to have extensive experience with "eastern" thought and philosophy (in quotes because she seems to mean India, but there is much much more "east"), these stories hinge on spiritual and philosophical views that would have been fairly unusual to the ears of westerners at the time - so unusual that the word "occult" winds up in the title. Anyway, the alarmingly blatant superiority complex especially typical of white people in this time period (and in so, so many others *sigh*) sneaks into otherwise interesting stories over and over again. The specifically patriarchal and condescending British view of their relationship to India in this period surely heightened this sense, even for a woman who seems to think she was writing sympathetically of Indian culture. Instead this is rather a great illustration of Said's "orientalism" at work. Interesting as sociology, I suppose.
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