Items related to The Beetle
Marsh's greatest commercial success was one of his earlier novels, The Beetle (1897). A story about a mysterious oriental person who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting, Marsh's novel is similar in some respects to certain other novels of the same period, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others during the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used for many late 19th-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense and to confuse gender boundaries. The novel uses numerous themes of the late 19th century, including unemployment and urban destitution, radical politics, homosexuality, science, and Britain's imperial engagements (in particular those in Egypt and the Sudan). "The Beetle" sold out upon its initial printing, and continued to sell well and to be published for several decades into the 20th century. During the 1920s the novel's story was made into a movie, and adapted for London drama.
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Review:
"For far too long we have had to do without an edition of one of the key best-selling novels of the fin de siecle, Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Broadview has once again come to the rescue with a new edition of this lurid classic that at one time outsold Dracula. Featuring useful appendices and with an extensive introduction by Julian Wolfreys, this edition will be coveted by everyone interested in late Victorian fiction." - Nicholas Daly, Trinity College, Dublin
"The Beetle is a great read. As Julian Wolfreys' admirably learned, perceptive, and comprehensive introduction, appendices, and notes show, it is also a wonderful assemblage of many motifs from popular culture at the fin de siecle. I enthusiastically recommend this book." - J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"The Beetle has it all: it's at once a ripping gothic yarn, a fin de siecle melodrama, and a document of the fears and obsessions of late imperial culture. Julian Wolfreys' introduction is excellent, bringing lots of fascinating material to bear on the novel and doing so clearly and persuasively. He makes you want to read it." - Jonathan Dollimore, author of Sexual Dissidence and Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture
From the Publisher:
"The Beetle is a great read. As Julian Wolfreys' admirably learned, perceptive, and comprehensive introduction, appendices, and notes show, it is also a wonderful assemblage of many motifs from popular culture at the fin de siecle. I enthusiastically recommend this book." - J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"The Beetle has it all: it's at once a ripping gothic yarn, a fin de siecle melodrama, and a document of the fears and obsessions of late imperial culture. Julian Wolfreys' introduction is excellent, bringing lots of fascinating material to bear on the novel and doing so clearly and persuasively. He makes you want to read it." - Jonathan Dollimore, author of Sexual Dissidence and Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture
"The Beetle has it all: it's at once a ripping gothic yarn, a fin de siecle melodrama, and a document of the fears and obsessions of late imperial culture. Julian Wolfreys' introduction is excellent, bringing lots of fascinating material to bear on the novel and doing so clearly and persuasively. He makes you want to read it." -- Jonathan Dollimore, author of Sexual Dissidence and Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture
"The Beetle is a great read. As Julian Wolfreys' admirably learned, perceptive, and comprehensive introduction, appendices, and notes show, it is also a wonderful assemblage of many motifs from popular culture at the fin de siecle. I enthusiastically recommend this book." -- J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"For far too long we have had to do without an edition of one of the key best-selling novels of the fin de siecle, Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Broadview has once again come to the rescue with a new edition of this lurid classic that at one time outsold Dracula. Featuring useful appendices and with an extensive introduction by Julian Wolfreys, this edition will be coveted by everyone interested in late Victorian fiction." -- Nicholas Daly, Trinity College, Dublin
"The Beetle has it all: it's at once a ripping gothic yarn, a fin de siecle melodrama, and a document of the fears and obsessions of late imperial culture. Julian Wolfreys' introduction is excellent, bringing lots of fascinating material to bear on the novel and doing so clearly and persuasively. He makes you want to read it." -- Jonathan Dollimore, author of Sexual Dissidence and Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture
"The Beetle is a great read. As Julian Wolfreys' admirably learned, perceptive, and comprehensive introduction, appendices, and notes show, it is also a wonderful assemblage of many motifs from popular culture at the fin de siecle. I enthusiastically recommend this book." -- J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"For far too long we have had to do without an edition of one of the key best-selling novels of the fin de siecle, Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Broadview has once again come to the rescue with a new edition of this lurid classic that at one time outsold Dracula. Featuring useful appendices and with an extensive introduction by Julian Wolfreys, this edition will be coveted by everyone interested in late Victorian fiction." -- Nicholas Daly, Trinity College, Dublin
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.
Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.
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- PublisherAloha Library
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 1682041840
- ISBN 13 9781682041840
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages138
- Rating
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