Melmoth the Wanderer: Charles Maturin (The Penguin English Library)

Really enjoyed the book interesting storyline

Great quality and I am obsessed with this cover design. It's a really affordable price for such a nice edition. It also includes an extra article at the end of the novel.

What a beautiful book! Fantastic example of early gothic literature with a spellbinding plot. Such a shame it wasn’t appreciated when first published! If you’re a fan of the gothic, definitely give this a go (bear with the many many digressions and sub plots - it’s worth it).

Struggled trough this wondering where it was going. Very confusing narrative - I kept at it in the hope that it might improve, but it didn't.

A BOOKLET...A SCAM...Make sure you get the REAL Book...not this Rubbish.

Charles Maturin published this novel in 1820 and it still has the power to draw you in and hold your attention. Although there are multiple narrators all of them have the same ‘voice’ and the story as a whole has too many coincidences and is completely implausible – but it seems to work, and has always been admired.When student John Melmoth visits his surviving relation, his uncle, it is because he is on his deathbed, and thus whilst he attends his miserly uncle John first finds a portrait, and then a manuscript giving details about the Melmoth of the title. And then when a ship is destroyed nearby, one of the survivors turns out to know more about this mysterious relation of John.With a Faustian influence so we see why Melmoth the Wanderer seems to be still alive, despite the fact it is well over a century later that John hears of him. And thus, we are given here stories inside stories with doom, gloom and horrors galore, as we face the Inquisition and see what other torments await characters in this book.Very much an anti-Catholic tale this is still well worth reading, although I know some will find it a bit slow and heavy going. Personally, this is a favourite of mine, and I have read it numerous times in the past, and it is definitely something to savour if you are looking for something tense and love gothic romances. This also is a sort of crossover as the book seems to straddle the older romance style of the Romantic period, with deeper psychological elements that were starting to take over in this genre.The question is – would you be tempted like Melmoth? Or would you forgo such an offer?

When John Melmoth inherits his uncle's estate in Ireland, he also inherits the family's sinister secret. Pieced together from his uncle's dying words, scraps of fragile manuscript and the tale of Spanish nobleman, John discovers the truth about his ancestor who sold his soul in return for an inhuman lifespan.The story of the cursed immortal is a familiar topic amongst Gothic literature, most famously explored in Don Juan and Faust. Maturin borrows heavily from the same sources as these works but creates something quite different. The supernatural, where it is occasionally invoked, is almost always anecdotal or proven to be more prosaic. Most of the book's narrators (of which there are many thanks to the unusual structure of encompassing tales within tales) are almost universally unreliable. Instead, Maturin uses his formidable prose to generate a sense of despair and gnawing horror through the descriptions of place and the circumstances into which his characters fall.That's not to say that this is a wholly successful book. The text is very dense and whilst this works to conjure brilliant atmosphere in the catacombs beneath a monastery or the dilapidated Irish mansion of the Melmoths, it sometimes seems longwinded (in describing the daily life of monks, for example). This tendency is particularly ridiculous when a girl, whom we are told can barely speak English, launches into a three page monologue on the wonder of creation. Furthermore, the serial nature of the tales, only loosely linked by the fleeting presence of Melmoth, makes this quite a disjointed novel even though there is very little variation in the `voice' of the narrators. You could argue that these are hints as to the reliability of those narrators but they are, equally, somewhat frustrating to the reader.My interest in the book varied from story to story. There's no doubt that Maturin was an enormously talented writer and his interpretation of the Gothic form has been hugely influential, however, it is not a novel without flaws and the extent to which these affect you will depend on your tolerance for the peculiarities and indulgences of nineteenth century literature. There is genius on display here but it is born of another age.