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Post by Calenture on Nov 28, 2007 21:47:25 GMT
Consul edition 1965 Uncredited cover. “Richard Marsh” - pseudonym of Bernard Heldmann (1857 - 1915) (Grandfather of Robert Aickman) This paragraph is from the Broadview Press 2004 edition: "The Beetle (1897) tells the story of a fantastical creature, "born of neither god nor man," with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician Paul Lessingham through fin de siecle London in search of vengeance for the defilement of a sacred tomb in Egypt. In imitation of various popular fiction genres of the late nineteenth century, Marsh unfolds a tale of terror, late imperial fears, and the "return of the repressed," through which the crisis of late imperial Englishness is revealed.”I found that the net is loaded with information and e-versions of The Beetle. The e-versions revealed that my Consul paperback is abridged which possibly helps its enormous readabilty. On the first page of the e-book linked at the foot of this post, there’s a lengthy conversation which has been excised from the Consul edition (happily, I think). Only Fantastic Fiction seems to note Marsh’s relationship with Robert Aickman. Wikipedia gives this: Richard Marsh (1857-1915) was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldman. He is best known for his supernatural thriller The Beetle, published in the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula and initially even more popular. The Beetle remained in print until 1960. Heldman was educated at Eton and Oxford University. He began to publish short stories, mostly adventure tales, as "Bernard Heldmann," before adopting the name "Richard Marsh" in 1893. Several of the prolific Marsh's novels were published posthumously.
Heldman's greatest commercial success came with one of his earliest novels, The Beetle (1897). A xenophobic story about a mysterious oriental figure who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting, Heldman/Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used in many late nineteenth-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense.Lovecraft wrote in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature: “Dracula evoked many similar novels of supernatural horror, among which the best are perhaps The Beetle, by Richard Marsh, Brood of the Witch-Queen, by "Sax Rohmer" (Arthur Sarsfield Ward), and The Door of the Unreal, by Gerald Bliss.Synopsis of the first ‘book’: Robert Holt is a clerk ‘out of a situation’. He has no home and hasn’t eaten for days and is walking through dark streets in the rain, when he sees the house with the open window. Desperate, he climbs into the house. It seems deserted and he is looking for something to eat when he becomes aware of a presence on the room. Then he sees the eyes. They are about six-inches from the ground and moving towards him, and he knows they are not the eyes of a cat. And then, in the dark, the thing begins crawling up his body. At this point the room is flooded with light as the owner of the house discovers Holt. Holt somehow finds himself under the control of an ancient creature, an old man who gets his power from the eponymous Beetle. Whether he controls it, or it him, isn’t yet clear. But somehow he is able to make Holt go to the house of a respected MP named Paul Lessingham to steal some letters written to him by his lover Marjorie Linden. When Holt takes the letters to the evil old man the effect is remarkable: Pen cannot describe the concentrated frenzy of hatred with which the speaker dwelt upon his name – it was demoniac. It is enough! – it is the end! – it is his doom! He shall be ground between the upper and nether stones in the towers of anguish, and all that is left of him shall be cast on the accursed stream of the bitter waters, to stink under the blood-grimed sun! And for her – for Marjorie Linden! – for his dear love! –it shall come to pass that she shall wish that she was never born – nor he! – and the gods of the shadows shall smell the sweet incense of her suffering! – It shall be! It is I that say it – even I!So ends the first book of this almost absurdly readable old pulp which H P Lovecraft praised highly in his essay on horror literature. The Gaslight eText of The Beetle can be read here. For more comments about the Broadview Press edition, click hereThe cover below is from an unidentified edition. The cover picture for the Consul edition was used again for Belmont Books The Doomsday Planet by Harl Vincent, incidentally.
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Post by weirdmonger on Nov 28, 2007 22:02:34 GMT
I read the 2nd chapter aloud in the Sixties to a one person audience, I recall, and found it one of the most frightening 'stories' I've ever read. (This chapter can be read on its own in his way, I feel).
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Post by redbrain on Nov 29, 2007 13:22:52 GMT
I read the 2nd chapter aloud in the Sixties to a one person audience, I recall, and found it one of the most frightening 'stories' I've ever read. (This chapter can be read on its own in his way, I feel). Could I have been the one person audience?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 29, 2007 17:41:10 GMT
Uncredited cover painting for the WDL edition, 1959 He was a prolific writer of short ghost and horror stories, too. Hugh Lamb's used at least four ( The Haunted Chair, The Mask, A Psychological Experiment, The Houseboat), Peter Haining dug up A Silent Witness for Unknown Tales Of Terror and Richard Dalby included the rugby story in one of his Mammoth Ghost Story treats. The Mask: Mary Brooker is a Broadmoor escapee with a genius for disguise. But what has this to do with the man suspected of drugging and robbing passenger Mr. Fountain, or the beautiful fellow traveller Mrs. Vaynes and her wizened mother? Fountain, doped and helpless, learns all when Mrs. Vaynes demonstrates the secret of the masks and finds himself glaring into the hideously mutilated visage of a maniacal human vampire. A Silent Witness: Exeter, 1893. Richard Wheeler, bank clerk, suffers an almighty cataleptic fit so convincing that he's promptly pronounced dead. A "conscious corpse" the while, he's screwed into his coffin and left to contemplate the delights of live burial. His dreadful plight isn't helped any by the dreadful crime he witnessed shortly before he collapsed: the head cashier has rifled the safe! The blaggard! He mustn't be allowed to get away with it! The Fifteenth Man: With Brixham R. C. unable to field a full team due to the skull fracture sustained by half-back Frank Joyce in the previous weeks game, Steyning are hot favourites to win. In a game played in thick fog, Joyce's 'replacement' plays a blinder although he's teammates insist they're a man down. As they leave the field victorious a telegram arrives from the hospital: Frank Joyce passed away an hour ago. The Disappearance Of Mrs. Macrecham: Herward Waller discovers a copy of The Art and Theory of Magic in Booksellers Row near Fleet Street. When his fearsome landlady admonishes him for the nth time he reads aloud a spell that transforms her into a cat. According to the book, the only way to bring the old battle-axe back is to cut the moggie's throat, something Waller is reluctant to attempt. But when the police start looking into the Mrs. Macrecham mysterious disappearance and accuse him of murder, there's nothing else for it. The butcher's boy is procured to perform the terrible task ...
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Post by redbrain on Nov 29, 2007 18:38:03 GMT
That last one is the most trashy (and therefore the best) Beetle cover so far.
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ghannah01
Crab On The Rampage
It's dark in here. Anyone have a match?
Posts: 28
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Post by ghannah01 on Jan 8, 2008 14:31:37 GMT
HEY I've got this Book...but where did I put it? I've got the last one with the lurid cover and IIRC I bought it because of that trashy cover. I'll have to dig this out and read it now. You're thread has renewed my interest. When I bought it I thought that it was a 1950s science fiction thing -- They had lots of Giant Insects in the 1950s. The story is more interesting than I thought. I'll have to hunt it out. Glen
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Post by wordswortheditions on Oct 27, 2008 15:45:34 GMT
With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies 'I saw him take a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies fell about him...and there issued out of them a monstrous creature of the beetle tribe...' From out of the dark and mystic Egypt come The Beetle, a creature of horror, 'born of neither God nor man', which can change its form at will. It is bent on revenge for a crime committed against the devotees of an ancient religion. At large in London, it pursues its victims without mercy and no one, it seems, is safe from its gruesome clutches. Richard Marsh's weird, compelling and highly original novel, which once outsold Dracula, is both a horror masterpiece and a fin de siecle melodrama embracing the fears and concerns of late Victorian society. Long out of print, The Beetle is now available in this Wordsworth edition, ready to chill you to the marrow and give you nightmares.
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Post by lobolover on Nov 13, 2008 22:28:40 GMT
I recently bought the last to date trans of the Beetle in czech-1930 edition,with night gown and gramophone adds in there.very nice feel. It has no cover ilustration,but is a small book,in medium brown color, smooth,but with the pages having fantastical lines in red on the from above,so it forms a "picture" when closed. Similar to an Ewers colction from 1911 I lended meself recently.
I liked this,though I do have to say the skit lags a bit every time a new narrator comes in.
Also,the cover on the first post is the best one to me.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 16, 2014 18:08:52 GMT
So ends the first book of this almost absurdly readable old pulp which H P Lovecraft praised highly in his essay on horror literature. Somehow I'd neglected to read The Beetle until this week, and I was surprised by just how readable and entertaining it is. Sure, it's totally xenophobic, and the offstage ending is a letdown (I think Marsh missed an opportunity for the heroes to follow the horror back to its source--it worked for his rival Stoker with Dracula and could have worked here too), but I still raced through it at a rate of one book per sitting.
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Post by ohthehorror on Nov 3, 2015 21:03:20 GMT
I'm reading this at the moment and have to force myself to put it down. Just finished Book One: The House With the Open Window. This is the edition I have, Can't wait for the weekend now so I can do the rest of it proper justice.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2016 18:08:00 GMT
Here's the original painting of WDL edition up on my wall
here is a delightful advert from the NY Sun, March 17, 1917
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