Melmoth the Wanderer

Melmoth the Wanderer is a unique hybrid of grotesque Gothic comedy and sardonic picaresque novel… The tale is multifaceted and extremely erudite… An old pathological miser dies and bequeaths his nephew – a student John Melmoth – his riches and an ominous family secret… A mysterious portrait of an anc......more

There's an old story told by Ezra Pound--I believe it can be found either in "The ABC of Reading" or "From Confucius to Cummings"--about a retired sea captain, determined to improve his primary school Latin, who was tasked by his tutor (the local vicar or schoolmaster) with reading Vergil's Aeneid.......more

Where do I begin with this one? To say I've been working on it thirty years plus would be bragging. I first encountered Melmoth in HP Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature, where he praised it to the rafters. I spent a summer working as a delivery man while in college, so I read the first pa......more

A Gothic work of Christian sexual hysteria.......more

"The life of the happy is all hopes--that of the unfortunate all memory." This beast of a book has been applauded as being right up there with "Frankenstein" as the pinnacle of the gothic era. I might agree. Now, I've tried and tried to give Gothic romances a fair shake, especially considering that......more