The Beetle: A Mystery (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) - Softcover

Marsh, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840226099 ISBN 13: 9781840226096

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 2007

Synopsis

This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction by David Stuart Davies.

‘I saw him take a different shape before my eyes.
His loose draperies fell about him...
and there issued out of them a
monstrous creature of the beetle tribe’

From out of the dark and mystic Egypt comes The Beetle, a creature of horror, 'born of neither God nor man', which can change its form at will. It is bent on revenge for a crime committed against the devotees of an ancient religion. At large in London, it pursues its victims without mercy and no one, it seems, is safe from its gruesome clutches.

Richard Marsh's weird, compelling and highly original novel, which once outsold Dracula, is both a horror masterpiece and a fin de siecle melodrama embracing the fears and concerns of late Victorian society. Long out of print, The Beetle is now available in this Wordsworth edition, ready to chill you to the marrow and give you nightmares.

About this title

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

"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

From the Publisher:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1840226099
• ISBN 13: 9781840226096
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288