![]() ![]() ![]() Overall, the modern reader is likely to feel crushed by the dead weight of Victorian Romanticism. Tedious purple passages full of rambling conjecture slow the action to the pace of a charnel worm and Crawford’s over-reliance on conventional plot contrivances such as unlikely coincidences and “love at first sight” undermine “the suspension of disbelief”, bogging the novel down in clichés. Well, after working my way through the 300 page novel that forms the centrepiece of this collection, I feel I am on my way to solving this mystery.ĭespite the originality of its conception, some interesting characterisation and an atmosp heric, if sketchily realised, setting, the “classic of occult fiction” (as Dennis Wheatley, who presented a previous paperback edition in 1974, dubbed it) has several fatal flaws. ![]() Yet strangely, quite soon after his death … became a forgotten writer and there seems to be no logical reason for the evaporation of interest in this skilled author.” “During his lifetime Francis Marion Crawford (1854 - 1909) … one of the most popular and commercially successful authors of his day. In his introduction to “The Witch of Prague and other Stories” (a volume in the Wordsworth Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural series) David Stuart Davies presents us with a mystery: ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |