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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 Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Volume 2

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The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Volume 2
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Date Published: 2010/01
Page Count: 500
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-051-8
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-052-5

A second helping from the ‘Queen of Sensation’ and her dark imaginings

Lovers of the Victorian fiction of Wilkie Collins know that to discover his female counterpart they need look no further than the works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. She was a prolific author of the kind of dark melodrama much loved by her contemporary audience and her most renowned work, ‘Lady Audley’s Secret,’ has been often dramatised, filmed and, indeed, has never been out of print from the time of its original publication. Never was the accolade, ‘The Queen of Sensation’ so well deserved as it was by her. It is not unusual that a writer who produced so much material—and much of that with a flavour of the Gothic—should also turn her talents to the genre of supernatural and strange fiction, since there was much precedent for it among her literary peers and much appetite for it among the reading public. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that this Leonaur collection of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s forays into the other worldly and bizarre runs to four substantial, satisfying volumes.
In this second volume the principal work is the novel, ‘The Conflict’. A duel to the death is generally recognised as being a conclusive end to the matter—but the victor here discovers that that may not always be true!.This novel was originally published in two volumes—both of which are included in this special Leonaur edition. Also here are the novelettes ‘At Chrighton Abbey’ and ‘Dr. Carrick’ and the short story ‘Her Last Appearance.’
This collection is available in soft cover and hardcover with dustjacket. 

From the trackless confusion of my ordinary dreams I came suddenly into a world where all things were distinct, and all events followed in regular sequence.<br>
I was in a hyperborean desert, whose biting cold I felt in every bone of my body, an iron plain under an iron sky, a vast monotonous steppe stretching far away to a sunless horizon, broken here and there by basaltic rocks scattered over the dismal waste in some volcanic upheaval, and with here and there an ice-bound pool which flashed like polished steel in the dim grey light.<br>
In my dream I thought that neither sun, nor stars, nor moon, had ever looked upon that frozen land.<br>
But in the distance, lurid against the greyness of earth and sky, there rose a column of fire, vermilion and orange flame, towering up to the iron roof of this dreadful world, and spreading a horrible glare over the arid plain. This fiery shaft rose from a great gap in the earth; and in my dream I knew it was the mouth of hell. I saw strange figures ascend and stream over the plain—figures of half-naked men, of gigantic size, but nobly fashioned—men whose faces shone with a diabolical beauty; the faces of falcons and eagles, full of evil power. No cloven hoofs, no horned brows revealed their horrid species; but in my dream I knew that they were devils.<br>
Suddenly, from behind a low ridge of rocks, there came a train of wild women. Many of them young, some beautiful, others old and haggard. They rushed across the plain, and met and mingled with the company of devils; and then began a diabolical dance of fiends and wild women, compared with which the revels of the witches on the Brocken were mild and civilized. I saw beauty and strength, streaming tresses, fiery eyes, the rugged force of giants, the serpentine grace of beautiful women, mingling in that savage rapture; and in my dream I knew that I was gazing upon a scene in the early dawn of history, and that these women were Scythian witches, banished from the cities and villages of the land, repudiated even by the barbarous hordes of the wild north; homeless, lawless, mates and companions for a company of devils.<br>
The dance seemed to last for hours. I saw white-haired hags trampled underfoot, grovelling in the dust, spurned by the flying feet of youth and power; and gradually, amidst the tumultuous throng, ever moving in wild gyrations, my attention became concentrated upon two figures which I had seen in the distance, towering above the rest, grander and more diabolical than any other shapes in that infernal throng.<br>
They came nearer to me; and in the face of the fiend I saw the features and expression of the man whose countenance I had watched and studied in the theatre. It was the same face, but grander in its unearthly power, a face lighted by the fires of hell, more beautiful, more terrible, than humanity. Beside him, hanging upon his shoulder in the diabolical dance, was the loveliest of all those witch-women; and these two having once appeared in the foreground of that Pandemonium, stood out in bold relief, distinctly outlined against the mass of fiendish faces and whirling forms, and dominated the scene. I seemed to watch them for an intolerable length of time, with sickened heart and weary eyes, weighed down by the sense of a world abandoned to the powers of darkness.
The hideous revelation of this infernal populace froze my soul. I think you know that I went to Oxford a doubter, and that I left the Varsity an unbeliever. Most of all had I scoffed at the notion of a hell, of a personal devil, and his army of fiends. And here, face to face with this demon-world, there came upon me the appalling conviction that the dominion of Satan was a power that had existed before the beginning of time, and would rule and reign throughout eternity.<br>
Suddenly a cloud of snow drifted across the lurid picture, and blotted it out.<br>
My dream changed, and I was standing in a watch-tower on the walls of Rome, looking down upon the sack of the city. I heard the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpets under the midnight sky, as the Salarian Gate was silently opened by a traitor’s hands, and Alaric’s barbarous hordes poured into the streets, with licence to sack and plunder, to ravage and kill, furious victors after a triple siege.
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