Richard Marsh’s greatest commercial success, The Beetle, is a story about a mysterious oriental person who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting. The story is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters to create suspense. The novel engages with numerous themes and problems of the Victorian fin de siècle, including the New Woman, unemployment and urban destitution, radical politics, homosexuality, science, and Britain’s imperial engagements (in particular those in Egypt and the Sudan).
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Uh huh. Could you maybe write the description so that it DOESN’T sound like a junior high book report?
Several years ago I offered a reprint of this very same book. Here is the blurb that accompanied it: “First published in 1897, this classic masterpiece of occult horror outsold “Dracula”, which was released the same year. Is the deadly creature known only as “The Beetle” human or beast, male or female…or something terrible never before seen on Earth?”
See, that actually might make someone WANT to read it.
OMG, am I the only one who knows that “Victorian fin de siècle,” is a tautology? Sweet Jesus, this is starting to make me nuts.
Is it? I don’t want to be the one defending the lousy blurb writer, but the Victorian age lasted over 60 years. It seems reasonable to me to differentiate between the 1850s and 1890s.
Well…Hitch has a very good point. While “ fin de siècle” means “end of the century” it is a phrase applied exclusively to the final decades of the 19th century (and in particular to the literature and art of the period)—very much in the same way that “Belle Epoque” refers to a specific era. So to say “Victorian fin de siècle” is to be redundant. There was no other fin de siècle than the Victorian one.
By the way, although this is hardly a great cover I thought I’d share what I did for my edition of the book, for whatever its worth…
Ron, my love, it is inarguably better than the disaster we’re looking at, above. Not your best, mind you, but…yup, better. 🙂
Aww, shucks.
Gottcha. I was focusing on the wrong part.
Showing off your knowledge of French, eh? 😄
Uhm, isn’t “Beetle” someone else’s IP?
If it’s the story originally published in 1897, as Ron notes above, then it’s likely in the public domain at this point. Now if it were the VW Beetle, or the Blue Beetle, or Beetle Bailey, then an argument could definitely be made.