DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Beleaguered City" (Being a Narrative of Certain Recent Events in the City of Semur, in the Department of the Haute Bourgogne. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen) by Mrs. Oliphant. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Though Scottish-born author Margaret Oliphant dabbled in a remarkable number of literary genres over the course of her career, critics and fans alike agree that some of her most abiding contributions were her tales of fantasy, science fiction, and the supernatural, many of which broke new ground in their time. A Beleaguered City blends elements of fantasy and science fiction, and the end result is an astonishingly compelling read.

This early work by Margaret Oliphant was originally published in 1900 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'A Beleaguered City' has a luminous intensity, a psychological realism and a gripping evocation of place. The story tells us about the citizens of a town who are driven outside their walls when their dead invade their city and push them out. The citizens are terrified by nothing but a deep sense of thousands of dead people who they once knew inhabiting their houses, streets, intimate spaces. Margaret Oliphant was born in Wallyford, Scotland in 1828. In 1849 she had her first novel published: Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland. By the late 1850's, Oliphant's husband passed away, leaving her almost entirely without resources, and therefore left to support her three remaining children by her own literary activity. Her fictional works encompass domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural.