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Hester Gaskell Gorst

Hester Gaskell Gorst ( née Holland ; 25 September 1887 – 18 October 1992) was a British writer and artist. Her horror stories are often anthologized. Early life and education He...

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Hester Gaskell Gorst (néeHolland; 25 September 1887 – 18 October 1992) was a British writer and artist. Her horror stories are often anthologized.

Early life and education

Hester Gaskell Holland was born in Wavertree, Liverpool,[1] the daughter of Walter Holland and Alice Franklin (née Wray) Holland. Her father was a steamship owner; her mother was born in India to British parents.[2] She attended the Slade School of Fine Art from 1904 to 1906, working with painter Henry Tonks, with further studies in Brussels.[3][4][5]

Oast House at Catts Place, Mile Oak Road, Paddock Wood, Kent; Gorst and her husband lived at Catts Place from 1918 until 1973.

Career

Gorst was an artist and sculptor. In 1931 she exhibited her "delightfully fanciful work" at the Cooling Galleries in London.[6] Paintings by Gorst were featured in the Stock Exchange Art Society Exhibitions in 1952 and 1953.[7][8] She made a bust of John Brunt in 1961.[9] In 1979, she had a one-woman exhibition of her paintings in London, partly organized by her granddaughter Jessica Gorst-Williams, and appeared on the Russell Harty television program.[10] She was a social acquaintance of Wyndham Lewis.[11]

Publications

Gorst contributed a poem to a memorial tribute to Lord Kitchener in 1916.[12] Her short fiction has been reprinted regularly, usually in collections of horror stories. "Dorner Cordaianthus" (1925) is about a paleobotanist who discovers and plants an ancient fertile seed; it was first collected in Christine Campbell Thomson's anthology Grim Death (1932)[13] and also appears in Roots of Evil: Beyond the Secret Life of Plants (1976) and Hortus Diabolicus (2022).[14][15] "The Doll's House" (1933) appeared in The Virago Book of Ghost Stories (1987, edited by Richard Dalby), when she was a hundred years old.[16] Her 1936 haunted-house story "The Scream" was adapted for television in 1953.[9]

  • "Dorner Cordaianthus" (1925, short story)[13]
  • "Second Sight" (1927, short story)[17]
  • "The Door" (1932, short story)[15]
  • "In the Park" (1932, short story)[15]
  • "Shapes" (1932, short story)[15]
  • "High Tide" (1933, short story)[15]
  • "Littlesmith" (1933, short story)
  • "The Doll's House" (1933, short story)[16]
  • "The Library" (1933, short story)[15]
  • "The Scream" (1936, short story)[10]
  • Weekend for Henry (novel)[10]
  • There's Always Oneself (novel)[10]
  • A Man Must Live (1939, novel)[1]
  • "To Churchill" (1944, poem)[18]
  • Under the Circumstances (1944, novel)[19]

Personal life

Holland married Elliot Marcet Gorst in 1914.[20] He was a lawyer[1] and founder of the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Society.[9] They lived at Catts Place in Paddock Wood.[10] He died in 1973,[21] and she died in 1992, in London, at the age of 105.[22]

References

  1. 123"Novelist's Liverpool Associations". Liverpool Daily Post. 1 April 1939. p. 7. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  2. ↑"A Distinguished Shipowner; The Late Mr. Walter Holland". Liverpool Daily Post. 10 May 1915. p. 5. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑Dolman, Bernard (1927). Who's who in art. Internet Archive. London : Art Trade Press. p. 220.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  4. ↑Buckman, David (1998). Dictionary of artists in Britain since 1945. Internet Archive. Bristol : Art Dictionaries. p. 497. ISBN 978-0-9532609-0-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  5. ↑Child, Dennis (2002). Painters in the northern counties of England and Wales. Internet Archive. Leeds : Dennis Child. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-9523247-1-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  6. ↑"Our London Letter: Their Own World of Art". Liverpool Daily Post. 15 October 1931. p. 6. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑"The Londoner's Diary; Nudes in the City". Evening Standard. 5 November 1952. p. 4. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑"The Londoner's Diary: Culture in the City". Evening Standard. 7 October 1953. p. 4. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  9. 123"Bust of VC". Tunbridge Wells Courier. 15 December 1961. p. 12. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  10. 12345"London 'First" Comes at 90". Tunbridge Wells Courier. 16 March 1979. p. 5. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑O'Keeffe, Paul (1 June 2015). Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis. Catapult. pp. 350–351. ISBN 978-1-61902-642-1.
  12. ↑Forshaw, Charles Frederick (1916). Poems in Memory of the Late Field-Marshall Lord Kitchener, K.G. Institute of British Poetry. p. 96.
  13. 12Thomson, Christie Campbell (1928). Grim death. The not at night series; no. 8. London: Selwyn & Blount. Archived from the original on 9 July 2024. Retrieved 14 October 2025.
  14. ↑Cassaba, Carlos, ed. (1976). Roots of evil: beyond the secret life of plants. London: Corgi Books. ISBN 978-0-552-10072-4.
  15. 123456Hester Holland GorstArchived 2025-12-02 at the Wayback Machine, The Fiction Mags Index.
  16. 12Dalby, Richard (1988). The Virago book of ghost stories. Internet Archive. New York : McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-015133-8.
  17. ↑Gorst, Hester (9 February 1927). "Second Sight". Brisbane Telegraph. p. 16. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑Gorst, Hester (11 October 1944). "To Churchill". Liverpool Echo. p. 2. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑"Liverpool Novelist". Liverpool Daily Post. 15 February 1944. p. 2. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  20. ↑"Mossley Hill Wedding; Miss Holland, Mr. E. M. Gorst". Widnes Weekly News. 10 July 1914. p. 1. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑"Elliot Marcet Gorst (death notice)". The Daily Telegraph. 29 November 1973. p. 30. Retrieved 14 October 2025– via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑NOTICE: THE LONDON GAZETTE, 19TH MAY 1993, thegazette.co.uk. Accessed 18 March 2026.