Melmoth the Wanderer

Melmoth the Wanderer is a dark Faustian tale in the gothic style. It is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil for an extra 150 years of life, a pact he can get out of only if he persuades another soul to take his place. Melmoth travels to the depths of human misery and despair in the attempt to find someone desperate enough to make such a devilish bargain. This work was a huge hit in the nineteenth century and highly innovative for its time, as it tells its story as a series of flashbacks and embedded tales, with different narrators and viewpoints. It is full of extravagant prose, convoluted plotting and archaic language - totally different to a modern novel, but highly rewarding to the dedicated reader. This is a new, unabridged edition (not a scan) of the original four-volume novel of 1820 from Benediction Classics.Charles Robert Maturin was an Irish clergyman whose early novels led Sir Walter Scott to recommend them to Byron. One of his plays was denounced by Coleridge, and the Church of Ireland barred Maturin's further promotion upon learning he had written it. Forced to support his wife and four children by writing, he returned to novels. Maturin died in Dublin in 1824. There were unsubstantiated rumors of suicide.