Melmoth the Wanderer (World's Classics) [Paperback]

Charles Maturin (Author), Douglas Grant (Editor), Chris Baldick (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 1989 | Series: World's Classics

Written in 1820 by an eccentric Anglican curate in Dublin, this work brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new pitch of claustrophobic intensity. Its tormented villain, a Faustian transgressor desperately seeking a victim to release him from his fatal bargain with the devil, was regarded by Balzac as one of the great outcasts of modern literature. Maturin's bizarre narrative structure of interlinked tales allows the action of the novel to range from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island. The text is that of the first edition of 1820, and includes a new introduction and explanatory notes.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Robert Maturin was born in Dublin in 1782, and educated at Trinity College. He took orders and was a curate in Loughrea and Dublin, and also, for a time, worked as a teacher until literary success enabled him to give this up. His first novel, The Fatal Revenge (1807), was published under a pseudonym to protect his reputation as a clergyman. A series of other novels followed, and his tragedy Bertram (1816) met with great success when it was produced by Edmund Kean at Drury Lane, after recommendation by Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. His next plays, Manuel (1817) and Fredolfo (1819) were failures, and Maturin returned to writing novels. Melmoth the Wanderer appeared in 1820, but in the last years of his life his works were neglected, and he died in poverty in 1824. In the 1890s his literary reputation in England was revived, and his works were reprinted in various editions.

Maturin's Calvinist upbringing lent to his work a strong sense of the soul's relationship with God, which can also be seen in the work of James Hogg, William Godwin and Godwin's daughter, Mary Shelley. He was also influenced by comic writers of epics and romances, such as Cervantes, Swift, Sterne and Diderot. His strongest influences were the authors of Gothic romances of the late eighteenth century, in particular, Matthew Lewis and Ann Radcliffe. Maturin's tales were, however, always more extravagant and macabre, and led to his reputation as one of the foremost writers of the Gothic school.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 584 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 10, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192821997
• ISBN-13: 978-0192821997
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,740,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melmoth - The Anti-Quixote, July 11, 2000

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mp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Melmoth the Wanderer (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer.

"Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him.

Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer.

This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Gothic Novel, January 28, 2003

By 

M. Hori "Jesse Glass" (Urayasu, Chiba Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Melmoth the Wanderer (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Written by a man who assumed his brother's debts and apparently went out of his mind trying to write himself out from under this monetary burden; a man who wore a wafer pasted to the center of his forehead while writing, and who fancied the ballroom and dancing just as much (or maybe more) than the pulpet;--Melmoth the Wanderer is simply the oddest and most delicious concoction of mad prose this side of Abiezzar Cope. The story is a vertiginously creaky assemblage of vignettes that spiral in and out of each other in a bewildering--and sometimes belabored--manner. We often wish we could rip out 50 or so pages of purple prose here and there and throw them into the mouths of the nearest BLACK DOGS from Hades, but we must restrain ourselves enough to follow Melmoth (the chuckling friend--or should we say fiend?--of John Dee and Edward Kelly it turns out)--to his ultimate damnation. Scattered throughout the text are poppies of arcane lore--the very kind of volume that Poe would have had in his hands when the Raven came tapping at his chamber door! Not only did Poe love this book, but so did Doestoyevsky, Balzac, Lautreamont, Oscar Wilde, Scott, and hoards of other literary greats! Hey--add your name to the list!

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate Gothic novel, June 15, 1998

By 

Mark Shanks (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Melmoth the Wanderer (World's Classics) (Paperback)

Published in 1820, Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is usually named as the last of the Gothic novels. Gothic here implies the incorporation of Burke's elements of the "sublime", wherein terror and sorrow invoke in the reader a heightened sense of empathy with the events unfolding in the narrative. Maturin pulls out all the stops of his time in creating situations of hopelessness, fear, and both religous and social sadism. Melmoth himself has sold his soul to the devil (will these people *never* learn? ;-) and attempts over the course of scores of years to find someone so desperate that they will take this "bargain" off his hands before the devil comes for his due. The novel is constructed of tales-within-tales, depicting the awful conditions the people Melmoth seeks out find themselves in. For example, the "Tale of the Spaniard" is told by a prisoner of the Inquisition (although this tedious tale takes over 120 pages to even GET to the Inquisition), whose life is still not so horrible that he would willingly trade place with the wandering Melmoth. The narrative is infuriatingly slow and convoluted, and only a perseverance surpassing the average will reward the patient reader with the creation of atmosphere that keeps this book on the "must read" list of true afficiandos of the supernatural. A minor note: Patrick O'Brian pays tribute to the author by naming one of contemporary literature's most well-known characters after him: half of the "Aubrey/Maturin" team of O'Brian's 19th-century novels of naval warfare.