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Forthcoming titles

(Book titles are subject to change)

A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Edward Bulwer Lytton—Volume 3

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The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Edward Bulwer Lytton—Volume 3
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Edward Bulwer Lytton
Date Published: 2011/03
Page Count: 472
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-484-4
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-483-7

The third volume of a collection of weird tales by a Victorian master of the gothic and occult

In his time, the aristocratic Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1st Baron Lytton) was one of the most popular and prolific writers in the English language as well as a notable administrator who held the post of secretary of state for the colonies under Derby's government during the Victorian era. Today, few remember his works or indeed how he has left his mark on the language. For example we owe him acknowledgement for the expressions, 'the pen is mightier than the sword,’ 'the great unwashed' and for the infamous opening line of his novel, Paul Clifford, 'It was a dark and stormy night.’ This last contribution has inspired humorists for decades and even a writing competition. However, it would be unfair to Bulwer-Lytton to consider him solely by these diversions. Here was a well regarded writer of poetry and stage plays, of historical novels, mysteries, romances, science fiction and of excellently crafted tales of the supernatural and the occult—the subject of this special four volume collection from Leonaur. Several of his works were converted into operas and Bulwer-Lytton was also the editor of popular magazines, The New Monthly and The Monthly Chronicle. It is not uncommon for prolific writers to turn their talents to a variety of genres and in any event Bulwer-Lytton belonged to the golden age of gothic and supernatural writing in which there were several highly regarded authors whose contributions remain cherished to this day. In his retrospective view of the very finest writers of ghost stories, the author M. R. James (widely accepted as a master of the genre himself) made special note of Bulwer-Lytton's, 'The Haunters and the Haunted.’ However, the author's particular interest in the occult found expression in his writings on the bizarre and many of his most chilling tales have this at their core.
The third volume of this Leonaur four volume collection includes a novel Zanoni, four short stories and two ballads of the strange and unusual.
This substantial collection is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket for collectors. 

He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it, and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the presence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps (nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently this light grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist, gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldness of death.<br>
Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning, instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.<br>
The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form, gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low sound—the ghost, as it were, of voice—which each caught and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of this movement of aerial happiness,—for such it seemed to him,—made him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same as if the mortal were not there.<br>
Slowly they glided round and aloft, till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was distinguishable,—nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the chamber.<br>
The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan, and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone.<br>
All else so dark,—shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost human in its passion of hate and mockery,—something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,—his hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze,—the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
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