Product Description

'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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29061 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"The Beetle is a great read...I enthusiastically recommend this book."

J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"The Beetle is a great read...I enthusiastically recommend this book."

From the Publisher
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

Customer Reviews

Wierd.
"The Beetle" has got to be one of the strangest novels to come out of the richness of the whole Victorian/Edwardian Gothic tradition. It concerns a bizarre creature, the insect of the title, that can transform itself into a human being. The story starts with a down-and-out on the streets of London, trying desperately to find somewhere to shelter for the night against the rain. He finds a window open in what appears to be an abandoned house, and climbs in. He finds himself sharing his quarters with someone who appears slowly from under a mass of bedding in the corner. This person appears to be a bald-headed repellent old man, with a creepy way of speaking, who takes the tramp for its first victim.

Rather akin to Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" in that this terrible creature begins to wreck havoc on the polite society it finds itself in. But what is this creature? For one thing we are never entirely sure what sex it is, on many occasions it appears to be an hermaphrodite, which adds some intriguing sexual psychology to the proceedings! Or perhaps Marsh was simply picking up on the old idea that alchemists, when they had perfected their craft, were able to change sex? The whole story is a bizarre yet absorbing mix of true Victorian spaciness combined with John Buchan-style heroics (there is a splendid chase scene when the creature is pursued across London and onto a train). I suspect the reasons it is not that well known these days is that the writing is quite dated. Incidentally, Richard Marsh was the grandfather of fantasy writer, Robert Aickman, so it seems that writing "strange stories" ran in the family!

A Neglected Thriller
This book came out at the same time as Dracula but has not fared as well over the years. It has been unduly overshadowed by its better known rival.
This is a very good gothic horror novel that, though slow at times, manages to keep you on the edge of your seat. Marsh covers everything from mesmerism and cults to human sacrifice.
Definitely worth a read if you can find a copy.

Marsh's Masterpiece
Published at around the same time as Stoker's Dracula this book initially outsold Dracula, but alas over the years it has not fared so well. For something like forty plus years it remained out of print, but now with this Wordsworth Edition you can have a brand spanking new one at an affordable price. This book has always been considered by most to be Richard Marsh's masterpiece and it is definitely a classic horror tale from the fin de seicle putting it alongside Dracula and The Picture of Dorien Gray. So why then has it become neglected? Unlike the other two books mentioned this has dated, but probably more importantly it doesn't fall nicely into one genre and it is all a bit camp. I love nineteenth century novels and I love gothic horror and decadence, so that didn't put me off of this as probably it would some people.

Told by four different narrators we are told a strange and bizarre tale of a creature - a scarab beetle that shapeshifts into a man, or as some report, a woman. We are never really sure what the thing really is or what sex, does it use magic to become human or is it human and changes sex and becomes a beetle by magic? This vagueness leads to the terror felt by the main characters - this thing is also able to mesmerise people and place them under its power. Taking in and mentioning the Cult of Isis, orgies and naked young women being sacrificed there is a whiff of decadence and erotica in this tale that runs most of the way through it, and this is probably what made it such a sensation at the time. Indeed if you were to take away the supernatural part from it this would read as a sensation novel. With the heroine being kidnapped we are led to believe that she will be stripped, tortured and killed, thus leading to the excitement at the later stages of the novel and leading to a great little chase scene.

Will the monster get what it wants, or will it be eventually thwarted? I'm not going to say, you will just have to read this book to find out. If you love a great read that is both fun and enjoyable then buy this book. If you are into classic horror then this should really be on your bookshelf, the same applies if you are into fin de siecle. All in all this is a great little read and will definitely while away a few hours.