People have enjoyed stories of magic and the supernatural for ages, but in the late 18th century, tales of the occult became something more than a source of thrilling entertainment. At the dawn of the modern age, numerous writers found in the occult a powerful antidote to the rising scientification of human experience. In these reports from the dark side, the weird, enigmatic and unexplainable became symbols of the human spirit's resistance to the new rational world.
The Dedalus Occult Reader brings together for the first time a unique collection of European fiction, including passages from Valery Bruisov, Andre Bely, William Beckford, Honore Balzac, Jacques Cazotte, J.K.Huysmans, Bulwer-Lytton, de Maupassant, de Nerval, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann , Arthur Machen, Gustav Meyrink, Jan Potocki and Robert Irwin, offering some of the finest flowers and bizarre blooms from the hermetic gardens of literary occultism.
