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(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 1

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The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Edward Bulwer Lytton—Volume 1
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Edward Bulwer Lytton
Date Published: 2011/03
Page Count: 472
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-480-6
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-479-0

Volume one 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 first volume of this Leonaur four volume collection includes a novel Asmodeus at Large, a novella ‘Falkland,’ ten short stories and two ballads of the strange and unusual.
This substantial collection is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket for collectors.

Then straightway a pang, quick, sharp, agonizing, shot through my heart. I felt the stream in my veins stand still, hardening into a congealed substance: my throat rattled; I struggled against the grasp of some iron power. A terrible sense of my own impotence seized me—my muscles refused—my will, my voice, fled—I was in the possession of some authority that had entered, and claimed, and usurped the citadel of mine own self. Then came a creeping of the flesh, a deadly sensation of ice and utter coldness; and, lastly, a blackness, deep and solid as a mass of rock, fell over the whole earth—I had entered Death!<br>
From this state I was roused by the voice of the Demon. “Awake, look forth!—Thou hast thy desire!—Abide the penalty!” The darkness broke from the earth; the ice thawed from my veins; once more my senses were my servants.<br>
I looked, and behold I stood on the same spot, but how changed! The earth was one blue and crawling mass of putridity; its rich verdure, its lofty trees, its sublime mountains, its glancing waters, had all been the deceit of my previous blindness; the very green of the grass and the trees was rottenness, and the leaves (not each leaf one and inanimate as they seemed to the common eye) were composed of myriads of insects and puny reptiles, battened on the corruption from which they sprang.<br>
The waters swarmed with a leprous life—those beautiful shapes that I had seen in my late delusion were corrupt in their several parts, and from that corruption other creatures were generated living upon them. Every breath of air was not air, a thin and healthful fluid, but a wave of animalcule, poisonous and fetid; (for the air is the Arch Corrupter, hence, all who breathe die; it is the slow sure venom of Nature, pervading and rotting all things;) the light of the heavens was the sickly, loathsome glare that steamed from the universal Death in Life. The tiniest thing that moved—you beheld the decay moving through its veins, and that its corruption, unconscious to itself, engendered new tribes of life!<br>
The world was one dead carcass, from which everything the world bore took its being. There was not such a thing as beauty!—there was not such a thing as life that did not generate from its own corruption a loathsome life for others! I looked down upon myself, and saw that my very veins swarmed with a mote-like creation of shapes, springing into hideous existence from mine own disease, and mocking the human destiny with the same career of love, life, and death. Methought it must be a spell, that change of scene would change. I shut my eyes with a frantic horror, and I fled, fast, fast, but blinded; and ever as I fled a low laugh rang in my ears, and I stopped not till I was at the feet of Lyciah, for she was my first involuntary thought. Whenever a care or fear possessed me, I had been wont to fly to her bosom, and charm my heart by the magic of her sweet voice. I was at the feet of Lyciah—I clasped her knees—I looked up imploringly into her face—Spirit of my Fathers! the same curse attended me still!<br>
Her beauty was gone. There was no whole,—no one life in that Being whom I had so adored. Her life was composed of a million lives. Her stately shape, of atoms crumbling from each other, and so bringing about the ghastly state of corruption which reigned in all else around. Her delicate hues; her raven hair, her fragrant lips—Pah!—What, what was my agony!—I turned from her again,—I shrank in loathing from her embrace,—I fled once more,—on—on. I ascended a mountain, and looked down on the various leprosies of earth. Sternly I forced myself to the task; sternly I inhaled the knowledge I had sought; sternly I drank in the horrible penalty I had dared.<br>
“Demon,” I cried, “appear, and receive my curse!”
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