Sir Arthur Ronald Fraser (1888-1974) wrote twenty seven novels, nearly all published by Cape, between 1924-1961; and a few other miscellaneous books. Wounded in the First World War and invalided out, he made his career in the overseas section of the Department of Trade, serving in Argentina and France as the Commercial Minister in the British Embassies there. His knighthood in 1949 was one of several decorations in recognition of a distinguished career.
By contrast, his writing has received hardly any acknowledgement or attention. Many of his novels are tinged with mystical fantasy. They are illumined by Fraser's deeply-held conviction that there is an order of reality superior to our familiar daily existence, and that this is infinitely wondrous and gracious: a vision he had in common with better-known writers of the fantastic such as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. Fraser's inspiration is drawn to some extent from Chinese spirituality, both Taoist and Buddhist, but this is interpreted through very English characters and settings, so that his books are by no means merely studies in evangelising orientalism. Ronald Fraser's work does not earn a reference in any major study of this century's English literature, no matter how exhaustive: neither does it appear n many studies of the fantastic in literature, though in a few he merits a bare paragraph of two.
This is the more surprising since Fraser is a fine prose writer whose evocation of colour, shape and movement is almost tactile in its vividness. There is a chaste sensuality in his writings, a spiritual beauty which is often the equal of the most successful passages in Machen or Blackwood, when a similarity intense mystical ecstasy is conveyed.
It is possible that Fraser's neglect may be in part because in some of his novels that readers are most likely to encounter - for example, The Flying Draper (1924) and The Fiery Gate (1943) - he projected his visionary ideas through the character of the man in the street: it is a draper and a grocer respectively who receive extraordinary powers. Those who prefer so-called naturalistic fiction might consider this a advance upon the outré hermits, aesthetes and occultists of Machen and Blackwood, but there are two problems. One is that aficionados of the fantastic tend to prefer to read about eccentric and bizarre characters, and these can paradoxically be more convincing within the scheme of a novel of the sublime and bizarre. The second is that Fraser does not always win the struggle to avoid patronising his workaday people.
Nevertheless, these works are not in fact typical of Fraser and there is much else that justifies greater interest in his writing. There are at least a handful of novels that have a delicate distinction. The most memorable is surely Flower Phantoms (1926) in which a fey art-deco girl who works in Kew Gardens finds that her spiritual yearnings lead to a passionate mystic communion with an orchid. The exquisite prose, all redolent of the hothouses and their exotic occupants, is a remarkable experience n itself, but the hints of higher realms of consciousness also have a rarefied interest. A slightly more earthbound return to a similar there - a young woman's spiritual awakening - is found in the novel which achieved the most acclaim in his lifetime, Rose Anstey (1930), in which the eponymous gamine's pantheistic explorations are set against the backdrop of an unconventional household emblematic of some of the other choices available - the way of the world, the way of the raffish artist and the way of the chill religious hermit. Again, a young woman's defiance of convention and ardent identification with the things of the spirit are proclaimed in Miss Lucifer (1939). It is these works, with their celebration of the liberation of the feminine psyche, which are at the heart of Fraser's vision.
Late in his life, in retirement, the direction of Fraser's thought led him to what may seem his natural home in the nascent New Age movement. He and his unconventional partner Ingrid ran a healing centre from a private temple attached to their home near Chinnor, Oxfordshire, and he was associated with the College of Psychic Studies and the Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation, translating books on the symbolism of Chartres Cathedral and on an initiate of the Egyptian mysteries. It would be natural to expect that this affinity with what has proved to be an enduring new movement of the late 20th century would lead to the rediscovery of his novels, but that has not yet happened. None of them are now in print and they are still very modestly priced second hand. It can only be a matter of time before the subtle power of his prose and the graceful conviction of his mysticism receive their long-overdue recognition.
Mark Valentine is preparing a full study of the work of Ronald Fraser and would be pleased to hear from any other enthusiasts of his work.