Roger Luckhurst – författare

'Don't you see that we are buried alive?'When Allan Quatermain is approached by Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to search for Sir Henry's missing brother, deep in the African interior, he agrees to lead their expedition. Quatermain has a map to the fabled King Solomon's Mines, whose treasure the missing man sought to attain. Their journey takes them to Kukuanaland, where they find a warrior tribe in thrall to King Twala. Soon the white men are embroiled in a desperate tribal battle, and Quatermain's expedition can only reach its goal with the aid of Gagool, the ancient 'mother' no one trusts. Haggard's exciting adventure story captivated readers when it was first published in 1885. It helped inaugurate a wave of 'lost world' romances inspired by the exploits of British explorers in colonial Africa. This new edition looks at Haggard's own African experiences and unlikely literary success, and his ambivalent attitude to the native tribes and the ravages of the British Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'.Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

STUNNING DETAIL - Adam Simpson's strong line makes for a jigsaw experience that is both challenging and richly rewarding, with visual interest on every single piecePERENNIAL APPEAL - Frankenstein's monster is a character who has transcended the novel to become part of the cultural consciousness. Even if you've never read the book you will still enjoy the puzzlePERFECT FOR GIFTING - Appeals to core bookshop and gift-shop audience as well as to a general puzzle audienceGOOD SIZE - Completed puzzle measures 48.5 x 68 cm (19 x 27 in.)Packed with characters from the story, the illustration covers all the key scenes in incredible detail so that every piece has something to capture the imagination. This richly rewarding puzzle is accompanied by an illustrated poster and explanatory text detailing who's who in the grisly world of Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

An arresting and poignant cultural history of graveyards, from early burial sites to now. Why, how and where do we inter our dead? How do we set out to remember them? The Pyramids of Giza, the catacombs and columbaria of Rome and the cenotaphs erected to the world’s war dead are but some of the answers. In inimitable style, Roger Luckhurst probes the often moving, sometimes contested ways in which people throughout history have responded to the ‘problem’ of laying the dead to rest. Blending history, art, literature and popular culture, Graveyards explores the various different aspects of the treatment of the dead. Chapters range from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs, to grave-robbing, garden cemeteries and the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead, to monuments for deceased heroes and rulers and the development of modern memorial culture. The products of our persistent fascination with graveyards are everywhere in literature, art, film and television, and Luckhurst engages these cultural afterlives alongside grave sites’ particular social and historical contexts. Illustrations throughout offer insights into the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave: helpful guides and provisions for the afterlife, tender dedications, gravestones and effigies sit with memento mori paintings, artistic visions of the underworld and stills from classic horror. Beautifully designed and carefully researched, this book takes a lyrical, unexpected look at graveyards as both site and symbol.

''So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers...''At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankind''s future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialisation had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared ''a man of genius'', and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist. It is a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement and a detailed satirical commentary on the Decadent culture of the 1890s.This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book.

''So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers...''At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankind''s future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialisation had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared ''a man of genius'', and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist. It is a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement and a detailed satirical commentary on the Decadent culture of the 1890s.This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book.

''Don''t you see that we are buried alive?''When Allan Quatermain is approached by Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to search for Sir Henry''s missing brother, deep in the African interior, he agrees to lead their expedition. Quatermain has a map to the fabled King Solomon''s Mines, whose treasure the missing man sought to attain. Their journey takes them to Kukuanaland, where they find a warrior tribe in thrall to King Twala. Soon the white men are embroiled in a desperate tribal battle, and Quatermain''s expedition can only reach its goal with the aid of Gagool, the ancient ''mother'' no one trusts. Haggard''s exciting adventure story captivated readers when it was first published in 1885. It helped inaugurate a wave of ''lost world'' romances inspired by the exploits of British explorers in colonial Africa. This new edition looks at Haggard''s own African experiences and unlikely literary success, and his ambivalent attitude to the native tribes and the ravages of the British Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''Don''t you see that we are buried alive?''When Allan Quatermain is approached by Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to search for Sir Henry''s missing brother, deep in the African interior, he agrees to lead their expedition. Quatermain has a map to the fabled King Solomon''s Mines, whose treasure the missing man sought to attain. Their journey takes them to Kukuanaland, where they find a warrior tribe in thrall to King Twala. Soon the white men are embroiled in a desperate tribal battle, and Quatermain''s expedition can only reach its goal with the aid of Gagool, the ancient ''mother'' no one trusts. Haggard''s exciting adventure story captivated readers when it was first published in 1885. It helped inaugurate a wave of ''lost world'' romances inspired by the exploits of British explorers in colonial Africa. This new edition looks at Haggard''s own African experiences and unlikely literary success, and his ambivalent attitude to the native tribes and the ravages of the British Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head...''The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famousexamples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.''Stevenson''s short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor''s mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally revealed in one of the most original and thrilling endings in English literature.In addition to Jekyll and Hyde, this edition also includes a number of short stories and essays written by Stevenson in the 1880s, minor masterpieces of fiction and comment: ''The Body Snatcher'', ''Markheim'', and ''Olalla'' feature grave-robbing, a sinister double, and degeneracy, while ''A Chapter on Dreams'' and ''A Gossip on Romance'' discuss artistic creation and the ''romance'' form. Appendixes provide extracts from contemporary writings on personality disorder, which set Stevenson''s talein its full historical context.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.''Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of herfriends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a ''house of suffocation''.Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James''s most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James''s own Preface.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.''Stevenson''s short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor''s mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally revealed in one of the most original and thrilling endings in English literature.In addition to Jekyll and Hyde, this edition also includes a number of short stories and essays written by Stevenson in the 1880s, minor masterpieces of fiction and comment: ''The Body Snatcher'', ''Markheim'', and ''Olalla'' feature grave-robbing, a sinister double, and degeneracy, while ''A Chapter on Dreams'' and ''A Gossip on Romance'' discuss artistic creation and the ''romance'' form. Appendixes provide extracts from contemporary writings on personality disorder, which set Stevenson''s talein its full historical context.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.''Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of herfriends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a ''house of suffocation''.Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James''s most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James''s own Preface.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam'' Bram Stoker''s 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and his legions. As the horrifying story unfolds in the diaries and letters of young Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Mina, and Dr Seward, Dracula will be victorious unless his nemesis Professor Van Helsing can persuade them that monsters still lurk in the era of electric light. The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. A compelling read, rattling along at break-neck speed, it is a modern classic. This new edition includes Stoker''s companion piece, ''Dracula''s Guest''. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam'' Bram Stoker''s 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and his legions. As the horrifying story unfolds in the diaries and letters of young Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Mina, and Dr Seward, Dracula will be victorious unless his nemesis Professor Van Helsing can persuade them that monsters still lurk in the era of electric light. The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. A compelling read, rattling along at break-neck speed, it is a modern classic. This new edition includes Stoker''s companion piece, ''Dracula''s Guest''. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head...''The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famousexamples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think!'' H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in Weird Tales and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of ''weird fiction''. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary vision of feeble men driven to the edge of sanity by glimpses of malign beings that have survived from human prehistory or by malevolent extra-terrestrial visitations. The ornate language of his stories builds towards grotesque moments of revelation, quite unlike any other writer. This new selection brings together nine of his classic tales, focusing on the ''Cthulhu Mythos'', a cycle of stories that develops the mythology of the Old Ones, the monstrous creatures who predate human life on earth. It includes the Introduction from Lovecraft''s critical essay, ''Supernatural Horror in Literature'', in which he gave his own important definition of ''weird fiction''. In a fascinating contextual introduction, Roger Luckhurst gives Lovecraft the attention he deserves as a writer who used pulp fiction to explore a remarkable philosophy that shockingly dethrones the mastery of man.

''Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think!'' H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in Weird Tales and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of ''weird fiction''. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary vision of feeble men driven to the edge of sanity by glimpses of malign beings that have survived from human prehistory or by malevolent extra-terrestrial visitations. The ornate language of his stories builds towards grotesque moments of revelation, quite unlike any other writer. This new selection brings together nine of his classic tales, focusing on the ''Cthulhu Mythos'', a cycle of stories that develops the mythology of the Old Ones, the monstrous creatures who predate human life on earth. It includes the Introduction from Lovecraft''s critical essay, ''Supernatural Horror in Literature'', in which he gave his own important definition of ''weird fiction''. In a fascinating contextual introduction, Roger Luckhurst gives Lovecraft the attention he deserves as a writer who used pulp fiction to explore a remarkable philosophy that shockingly dethrones the mastery of man.

In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutenkhamen. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular press went wild with rumours of a curse on those who disturbed the Pharaoh''s rest and for years followed every twist and turn of the fate of the men who had been involved in the historic discovery. Long dismissed byEgyptologists, the mummy''s curse remains a part of popular supernatural belief. Roger Luckhurst explores why the myth has captured the British imagination across the centuries, and how it has impacted on popular culture.Tutankhamen was not the first curse story to emerge in British popular culture. This book uncovers the ''true'' stories of two extraordinary Victorian gentlemen widely believed at the time to have been cursed by the artefacts they brought home from Egypt in the nineteenth century. These are weird and wonderful stories that weave together a cast of famous writers, painters, feted soldiers, lowly smugglers, respected men of science, disreputable society dames, and spooky spiritualists. Focusing ontales of the curse myth, Roger Luckhurst leads us through Victorian museums, international exhibitions, private collections, the battlefields of Egypt and Sudan, and the writings of figures like Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Algernon Blackwood. Written in an open and accessible style, thisvolume is the product of over ten years research in London''s most curious archives. It explores how we became fascinated with Egypt and how this fascination was fuelled by myth, mystery, and rumour. Moreover, it provides a new and startling path through the cultural history of Victorian England and its colonial possessions.

In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutenkhamen. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular press went wild with rumours of a curse on those who disturbed the Pharaoh''s rest and for years followed every twist and turn of the fate of the men who had been involved in the historic discovery. Long dismissed byEgyptologists, the mummy''s curse remains a part of popular supernatural belief. Roger Luckhurst explores why the myth has captured the British imagination across the centuries, and how it has impacted on popular culture.Tutankhamen was not the first curse story to emerge in British popular culture. This book uncovers the ''true'' stories of two extraordinary Victorian gentlemen widely believed at the time to have been cursed by the artefacts they brought home from Egypt in the nineteenth century. These are weird and wonderful stories that weave together a cast of famous writers, painters, feted soldiers, lowly smugglers, respected men of science, disreputable society dames, and spooky spiritualists. Focusing ontales of the curse myth, Roger Luckhurst leads us through Victorian museums, international exhibitions, private collections, the battlefields of Egypt and Sudan, and the writings of figures like Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Algernon Blackwood. Written in an open and accessible style, thisvolume is the product of over ten years research in London''s most curious archives. It explores how we became fascinated with Egypt and how this fascination was fuelled by myth, mystery, and rumour. Moreover, it provides a new and startling path through the cultural history of Victorian England and its colonial possessions.

In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

'So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers...'At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankind's future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialisation had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared 'a man of genius', and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist. It is a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement and a detailed satirical commentary on the Decadent culture of the 1890s.This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book.

In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutenkhamen. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular press went wild with rumours of a curse on those who disturbed the Pharaoh's rest and for years followed every twist and turn of the fate of the men who had been involved in the historic discovery. Long dismissed by Egyptologists, the mummy's curse remains a part of popular supernatural belief. Roger Luckhurst explores why the myth has captured the British imagination across the centuries, and how it has impacted on popular culture. Tutankhamen was not the first curse story to emerge in British popular culture. This book uncovers the 'true' stories of two extraordinary Victorian gentlemen widely believed at the time to have been cursed by the artefacts they brought home from Egypt in the nineteenth century. These are weird and wonderful stories that weave together a cast of famous writers, painters, feted soldiers, lowly smugglers, respected men of science, disreputable society dames, and spooky spiritualists. Focusing on tales of the curse myth, Roger Luckhurst leads us through Victorian museums, international exhibitions, private collections, the battlefields of Egypt and Sudan, and the writings of figures like Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Algernon Blackwood. Written in an open and accessible style, this volume is the product of over ten years research in London's most curious archives. It explores how we became fascinated with Egypt and how this fascination was fuelled by myth, mystery, and rumour. Moreover, it provides a new and startling path through the cultural history of Victorian England and its colonial possessions.

In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

'Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think!' H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in Weird Tales and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of 'weird fiction'. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary vision of feeble men driven to the edge of sanity by glimpses of malign beings that have survived from human prehistory or by malevolent extra-terrestrial visitations. The ornate language of his stories builds towards grotesque moments of revelation, quite unlike any other writer.This new selection brings together nine of his classic tales, focusing on the 'Cthulhu Mythos', a cycle of stories that develops the mythology of the Old Ones, the monstrous creatures who predate human life on earth. It includes the Introduction from Lovecraft's critical essay, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', in which he gave his own important definition of 'weird fiction'. In a fascinating contextual introduction, Roger Luckhurst gives Lovecraft the attention he deserves as a writer who used pulp fiction to explore a remarkable philosophy that shockingly dethrones the mastery of man.

The Invention of Telepathy explores one of the enduring concepts to emerge from the late nineteenth century. Telepathy was coined by Frederic Myers in 1882. He defined it as 'the communication of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense'. By 1901 it had become a disputed phenomenon amongst physical scientists yet was the 'royal road' to the unconscious mind. Telepathy was discussed by eminent men and women of the day, including Sigmund Freud, Thomas Huxley, Henry and William James, Mary Kingsley, Andrew Lang, Vernon Lee, W. T. Stead, and Oscar Wilde. Did telepathy signal evolutionary advance or possible decline? Could it be a means of binding the Empire closer together, or was it used by natives to subvert imperial communications? Were women more sensitive than men, and if so why? Roger Luckhurst investigates these questions in an exciting and accessible study that mixes history of science with cultural history and literary analysis.

'Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.'Stevenson's short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor's mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally revealed in one of the most original and thrilling endings in English literature. In addition to Jekyll and Hyde, this edition also includes a number of short stories and essays written by Stevenson in the 1880s, minor masterpieces of fiction and comment: 'The Body Snatcher', 'Markheim', and 'Olalla' feature grave-robbing, a sinister double, and degeneracy, while 'A Chapter on Dreams' and 'A Gossip on Romance' discuss artistic creation and the 'romance' form. Appendixes provide extracts from contemporary writings on personality disorder, which set Stevenson's tale in its full historical context. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head...'The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better than in the revival of the Gothic tale in the late Victorian age, where the undead walked and evil curses, foul murder, doomed inheritance and sexual menace played on the stretched nerves of the new mass readerships. This anthology collects together some of the most famous examples of the Gothic tale in the 1890s, with stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Arthur Machen, as well as some lesser known yet superbly chilling tales from the era. The introduction explores the many reasons for the Gothic revival, and how it spoke to the anxieties of the moment. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.