Part Faust, part Mephistopheles, Melmoth has made a satanic bargain for immortality. Now he wanders the earth, an outsider with an eerie, tortured existence, searching for someone who will take on his contract and release him to die a natural death.
With its erudition and wit, and its parody of arcane learned manuscripts, this Gothic masterpiece-first published in 1820-follows in the tradition of both the classics of its genre and the works of Cervantes, Swift, and Sterne. Some of its many admirers were Sir Walter Scott, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Allan Poe, and Maturin's great nephew, Oscar Wilde. This edition includes a critical introduction, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading.
Author Bio: Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824), an ordained clergyman in the Church of Ireland, wrote several Irish romances, in addition to his Gothic novels.
Victor Sage is Reader in Literature at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and has written fiction as well as critical work on the Gothic tradition.
