Reproduction of the original.

‘Richard Marsh’ (Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857–1915) was a bestselling, versatile and prolific author of gothic, crime, adventure, romantic and comic fiction. This book, the first on Marsh, establishes his credentials as a significant agent within the fin de siècle gothic revival. Marsh’s work spans a range of gothic modes, including the canonical fin de siècle subgenres of urban and imperial gothic and gothic-inflected sensation and supernatural fiction, but also rarer hybrid genres such as the comic gothic and the occult romance. His greatest success came in 1897 when he published his bestselling invasion narrative The Beetle: A Mystery, a novel that articulated many of the key themes of fin de siècle urban gothic and outsold its close rival, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, well into the twentieth century. The present work extends studies of Marsh’s literary production beyond The Beetle, contending that, in addition to his undoubted interest in non-normative gender and ethnic identities, Marsh was a writer with an acute sense of spatiality, whose fiction can be read productively through the lens of spatial theory.

The imagination of the early twenty-first century is catastrophic, with Hollywood blockbusters, novels, computer games, popular music, art and even political speeches all depicting a world consumed by vampires, zombies, meteors, aliens from outer space, disease, crazed terrorists and mad scientists. These frequently gothic descriptions of the apocalypse not only commodify fear itself; they articulate and even help produce imperialism. Building on, and often retelling, the British ’imperial gothic’ of the late nineteenth century, the American imperial gothic is obsessed with race, gender, degeneration and invasion, with the destruction of society, the collapse of modernity and the disintegration of capitalism. Drawing on a rich array of texts from a long history of the gothic, this book contends that the doom faced by the world in popular culture is related to the current global instability, renegotiation of worldwide power and the American bid for hegemony that goes back to the beginning of the Republic and which have given shape to the first decade of the millennium. From the frontier gothic of Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly to the apocalyptic torture porn of Eli Roth's Hostel, the American imperial gothic dramatises the desires and anxieties of empire. Revealing the ways in which images of destruction and social upheaval both query the violence with which the US has asserted itself locally and globally, and feed the longing for stable imperial structures, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of popular culture, cultural and media studies, literary and visual studies and sociology.

Richard Marsh, best-selling author of the late 19th century and Edwardian period, is best known for his supernatural novel ‘The Beetle’, which initially outsold Bram Stoker's ‘Dracula’. Marsh produced nearly 80 volumes of novels and short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance and humour; recently the rediscovered works of this ‘lost author’ have attracted increased attention. Presenting the largest collection of Marsh’s works ever compiled, this comprehensive eBook features numerous illustrations, rare novels and tales and concise introductions. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Marsh’s life and works * Concise introductions to the novels and other texts * 26 novels, with individual contents tables * Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Rare horror and thriller novels and tales * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Easily locate the short stories you want to read * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels THAT MASTER OF OURS DAINTREE THE DEVIL’S DIAMOND THE MYSTERY OF PHILIP BENNION’S DEATH THE CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL THE DUKE AND THE DAMSEL THE BEETLE: A MYSTERY TOM OSSINGTON’S GHOST THE DATCHET DIAMONDS THE WOMAN WITH ONE HAND AND MR ELY’S ENGAGEMENT THE CHASE OF THE RUBY THE GODDESS: A DEMON A HERO OF ROMANCE A SECOND COMING ADA VERNHAM, ACTRESS THE JOSS: A REVERSION THE TWICKENHAM PEERAGE THE MAGNETIC GIRL MISS ARNOTT’S MARRIAGE A DUEL A SPOILER OF MEN THE CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG LADY A WOMAN PERFECTED THE COWARD BEHIND THE CURTAIN VIOLET FORSTER’S LOVER THE MASTER OF DECEPTION The Shorter Fiction FRIVOLITIES THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN AMUSEMENT ONLY BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT UNDER ONE FLAG JUDITH LEE: SOME PAGES FROM HER LIFE SAM BRIGGS: HIS BOOK THE ADVENTURES OF JUDITH LEE SAM BRIGGS V.C. The Short Stories LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks