Customer Reviews

The Seen and the Unseen

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Richard Marsh really is a good writer, and these short stories, first published in 1900, have the easy confidence of a sure craftsman.

There are delightful characters: the tall bearded man with his pockets full of lizards, the feisty spirit that keeps popping up in photographs, the ghost who plays rugby. Fun dialog abounds. As one character remarks: "I drew the line at sleeping with a ghost." Occasionally a crime solves itself.

There are real ghosts, false ghosts, ordinary people afflicted with hallucinations, second sight and out-of-body powers - and cases of just plain humbuggery. Marsh mostly takes a humorous view of the odd doings of his characters.

Some researchers claim that Marsh was at one period a bit of a fraudster himself and did time for passing bad checks. Perhaps this enriched his understanding of the swindlers and hoaxers that pepper his fiction. But he's equally adept at portraying noble women, respectable gentleman and officious clerks.

If you like short stories with a vintage flavor, I would certainly recommend these. I'm slowly reading all the books I can find by Richard Marsh, who had quite a wild imagination and was justly popular among fin de siècle readers.