The Devil in a Domino (Valancourt Classics)
The Devil in a Domino (Valancourt Classics)

Author: Chas L'Epine

Publisher:

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9781943910823

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The offspring of a profligate scoundrel and a drunken circus performer, Aleck Severn was born inside a prison's walls after his mother stabbed his father to death. Severn shows no outward signs of inheriting his parents' faults: a handsome, affable man about town, he is popular with his friends and beloved by his wife Marianne. But she begins to suspect her husband has a dark secret. What is he doing during those long nights alone at a remote house? And what connection could it have to the bodies of murdered women being found around London? One of the earliest novels inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders, The Devil in a Domino (1897) received mixed reviews when originally published, with critics praising the author's literary talent while decrying the book's horrific contents. A work of exceeding rarity, it survives in only a handful of known copies and has not been reprinted in over a century. This new edition features an introduction by Simon Stern. "[A] frankly horrible performance ... a gruesome compound of madness and butchery, with nameless horrors in the background. No sane person could find pleasure in reading such a story ... it would have been better had it not been written." - The Literary World "[A] peculiarly repulsive piece of writing, indicative of the low and morbid type of so-called literature which is purveyed to a half-educated constituency." - Edinburgh Evening News "In its diabolical horrors it recalls the ghastly series of crimes supposed to have been the work of 'Jack the Ripper.' Those who like to sup on sensation will find all they want in The Devil in a Domino." - Dundee Evening Telegraph

Vernon Downs
Vernon Downs

Author: Jaime Clarke

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1448214203

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Charlie Martens is desperate for stability in an otherwise peripatetic life. An explosion that killed his parents when he was young robbed him of normalcy and he was shuttled from relative to relative, left alone to decipher the world he encountered in order to cobble together an answer as to how he would live. Ever the outcast, Charlie recognizes in Olivia, an international student from London, the sense of otherness he feels and their relationship seems to promise salvation. But when Olivia abandons him, his desperate mind fixates on her favorite writer, Vernon Downs, who becomes an emblem for reunion with Olivia. Charlie's quest takes him from Phoenix to New York City and when chance brings him into proximity to Vernon Downs, he quickly ingratiates himself into Downs's world. Proximity invites certain temptations, though, and it isn't long before Charlie moves dangerously from fandom to apprentice to outright possession.

The Female Thermometer
The Female Thermometer

Author: Terry Castle

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 019508098X

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A collection of the author's essays on the history and development of female identity from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Throughout the book are woven themes which are constant in Castle's work: fantasy, hallucination, travesty, transgression and sexual ambiguity.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Three
The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Three

Author: Ellen Wood

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Published: 2018-11-20

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781948405218

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A new anthology of twenty ghostly tales of Yuletide terror, collected from rare Victorian periodicals Seeking to capitalize on the success of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), Victorian newspapers and magazines frequently featured ghost stories at Christmas time, and reading them by candlelight or the fireside became an annual tradition, a tradition Valancourt Books is pleased to continue with our series of Victorian Christmas ghost stories. This third volume contains twenty tales, most of them never before reprinted. They represent a mix of the diverse styles and themes common to Victorian ghost fiction and include works by once-popular authors like Ellen Wood and Charlotte Riddell as well as contributions from anonymous or wholly forgotten writers. This volume also features a new introduction by Prof. Simon Stern. "Before me, with the sickly light from the lantern shining right down upon it, was--a cloven hoof! Then the awfulness of the compact I had made came to my mind with terrible force ..." - Frederick Manley, "The Ghost of the Cross-Roads" "By the fireplace there was a large hideous pool of blood soaking into the carpet, and leaving ghastly stains around. I am not ashamed to confess that my brain reeled; the mysterious horror overcame me ..." - Lillie Harris, "19, Great Hanover Street" "A fearful white face comes to me; a horrible mask, with features drawn as in agony--ghastly, pale, hideous! Death or approaching death, violent death, written in every line. Every feature distorted. Eyes starting from the head. Thin lips moving and working--lips that are cursing, although I hear no sound." - Hugh Conway, "A Dead Man's Face"

A Short History of English Literature
A Short History of English Literature

Author: Harry Blamires

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-02-28

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1134942109

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First published in 2012. This work of introduction is designed to escort the reader through some six centuries of English literature. It begins in the fourteenth century at the point at which the language written in our country is recognizably our own, and ends in the 1950s. It is a compact survey, summing up the substance and quality of the individual achievements that make up our literature. The aim is to leave the reader informed about each writer’s main output, sensitive to the special character of his gifts, and aware of his place in the story of our literature as a whole.

Impassioned Jurisprudence
Impassioned Jurisprudence

Author: Nancy E. Johnson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1611486769

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In this volume of essays, scholars of the interdisciplinary field of law and literature write about the role of emotion in English law and legal theory in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The law’s claims to reason provided a growing citizenry that was beginning to establish its rights with an assurance of fairness and equity. Yet, an investigation of the rational discourse of the law reveals at its core the processes of emotion, and a study of literature that engages with the law exposes the potency of emotion in the practice and understanding of the law. Examining both legal and literary texts, the authors in this collection consider the emotion that infuses the law and find that feeling, sentiment and passion are integral to juridical thought as well as to specific legislation.

Gentleman Overboard
Gentleman Overboard

Author: Herbert Clyde Lewis

Publisher: Boiler House Press

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 1913861244

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Out of print for over seventy years, Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis is being rescued for today's readers to launch Boiler House Press's new series, Recovered Books. Halfway between Honolulu and Panama, a man slips and falls from a ship. For crucial hours, as he patiently treads water in hope of rescue, no one on board notices his absence. By the time the ship's captain is notified, it may be too late to save him... Rediscovered in 2009 by Brad Bigelow as part of tireless research for his popular Neglected Books website, Gentleman Overboard has since achieved the status of a cult classic and even become something of an international phenomenon, having seen translations into Spanish, Hebrew, and Dutch. The newspaper Ha'aretz has called it 'A miniature masterpiece that emerged from oblivion'; the Spanish magazine El Cultural dubbed it 'una perlita': 'a little pearl'. A masterful piece of narrative tension, and way ahead of its time, Gentleman Overboard sets the question of existence in its most basic terms. The story speaks fiercely to the contemporary moment and for all who share a sense of loneliness through having found themselves isolated by politics, disease, economics -or indeed just sheer accident and bad luck. The fate of the novel's hero even has ironic parallels with that of the author, Herbert Clyde Lewis, who died forgotten and alone in 1950, a victim of Hollywood's black list, and who has since slipped beneath the waves of fashion and time, but now hopefully is to be recovered from the murky depths for the readership he posthumously deserves.