The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson

                              Cosmic Horror From 1908 

                                              

                                                            Picture credit: The Plains of Heaven' ( 1851) by John Martin,
                                                            In the public domain, courtesy of  Tate Britain & Wikipedia

William Hope Hodgson was a master of unreality, and The House on the Borderland is a masterpiece. Rated highly by future authors such as H P Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett. Hodgson' view of the natural world is chaotic and seething with unknown possibilities, most outcomes are hostile to humanity. Disorder prevails. Hodgson is anti-Utopian and anti-pastoral. 

Two young men go camping in a desolate part of Ireland, hoping to enjoy the outdoor life and fishing. The natives are not friendly at first. The two chums follow a river which runs underground, into a strange soundscape, an ancient unkept garden, and discover a manuscript in book form in a ruined house which they are compelled to remove and take back with them

The inner core of The House on the Borderland begins. Said manuscript is written by an old man who lives with his sister in an isolated house along with his dog. After some ten years' residence, ghostly lights intrude into the sitting room. The old chap finds himself transported  deep into a landscape of red beyond the house, to a mountain cavern of an amphitheatre. He encounters the Egyptian god with his giant Ass head and the Hindu four armed goddess Kali with her necklace of skulls amongst other deities. I

It's noticeable that Hodgson was not connecting his tale with some sort of Gaelic Revival-citing figures from Irish mythology nor is he drawing on the 'Welsh Atlantis'  myth of Borth, Cardiganshire, where he was living at the time.There is something far reaching going on. And the Victorian motif of the sensation novel, with the claustrophobic  Gothic 'country pile' with its family secrets, a ghost or two, and a scandal, has now been expanded into layers of unreality. 

This puncturing of normality then lets a horde  of perverse mutant pigs into the story who besiege the decaying house.  Strangely reminiscent of the possessed swine in the Bible, but this time they are on the rampage without being banished and forced into their own destruction,tying to find all sorts of hidden access points. 

Hodgson systematically widens the plight of being besieged in a building into a universe imploding. Whatever the narrator of the story is witnessing is an unknown catastrophe. 

Why bother with this text? The actual house and grounds featured in The House on the Borderland functions as a portal to a seething underworld, The alien entities are not on a remote planet but are existing a lot closer, lurking in a dimension beneath our earth. Or perhaps in our own subconscious. but the creatures creep away. 

The central character then experiences a state of being beyond the universe. Then Time accelerates, day, night, human ageing process just speeds up. Furniture crumbles into dust. "Suddenly the earth appears to shoot forward." Soon the earth is by an emerald mass of light, a green sun. 

Then a new underworld emerges

" But however this may be, I am assured now, only of the fact that I became steadily more conscious of a new mystery about me, telling me that I had, indeed, penetrated within the borderland of some unthought of region-some subtle, intangible place, or for, of existence."

There is a lot more to discover within this novel. A 21st century reader can find so much that is now identifiable, whether its one man's psychological meltdown, possibly induced by a 'bad trip' using psychedelics, or humanity reaching the capacity to destroy the planet with nuclear weapons. 

There are shades of the Christian Apocalypse, or the Hindu goddess Kali dancing to dissolve time and destroy worlds.

Ten years after The House on the Borderland was published, William Hope Hodgson was killed in action on the Western Front.


Afterword

There are many different editions of The House on the Borderland : The 'British Library Tales of the Weird' edition from 2023, with an introduction by Ann VanderMeer is recommended. Ann VanderMeer cites the H P Lovecraft  quote about the novel - "One of the most potent pieces of Macabre imagination ever written'in praise. 



More from this blog 

The Weird Tales of William Hope Hodgson  Review of British Library 'Tales of the Weird' collection


Other Blogs by Michael Bully 

A Burnt Ship  17th century War & Literature -expect some updates for Gunpowder Treason Season 2026

World War 2 Poetry   As stated on the tin. 

Please note that any mistakes or schoolboy errors in this post are the responsibility of the writer and should not be attributed to any source or group cited above. 

As usual, so pleased to note that the blog is being visited by people from all round the World. 
All much appreciated. 

Michael Bully

Worthing, England 

4th September 2026

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I  am trying to update news about this blog and other 19th century history on Bluesky : Do join me. 

Michael Bully @bleakchesneywold.bsky.social  

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