Casanova was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. He has become so famous for his often complicated and elaborate affairs with women that his name is now synonymous with "womanizer". He associated with European royalty, popes and cardinals, along with luminaries such as Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart. He spent his last years in Bohemia as a librarian in Count Waldsteins household, where he...

This early work by Arthur Machen was originally published in 1895 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography as part of our Cryptofiction Classics series. 'The Novel of the Black Seal' is a short story of a professor who discovers markings on some Welsh limestone that correspond to characters found in ancient Babylon. Arthur Machen was born in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales in 1863. At the age of eleven, he boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received a comprehensive classical education. His first major success came in 1894, with the novella 'The Great...

This early work by Arthur Machen was originally published in 1895 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography as part of our Cryptofiction Classics series. 'The Shining Pyramid' is a short story of a mysterious arrangement of stones found on a doorstep which lead to the discovery of underground dwellers best left untouched. Arthur Machen was born in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales in 1863. At the age of eleven, he boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received a comprehensive classical education. His first major success came in 1894, with the novella 'The...

Arthur Machen's occult investigator, Dyson, features in three short stories and the longer narrative, The Three Impostors. Dyson is not a professional detective, but has a keen interest in mysterious events. He investigates strange deaths and disappearances, and encounters weird beings and secret orders. Machen creates a world layered with shadows and wrapped in illusions, requiring all of Dyson's skill to ferret out reality, however strange it turns out to be. But will he find the truth in time?

"No one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph abounds" H.P. LOVECRAFT Dr. Raymond's ultimate goal is to devise a way to open man's mind so he may experience all the world has to offer. He calls this, "seeing the great god Pan." After much study of the human mind he devises an experiment which involves minor brain surgery. He performs this experiment on a young woman named Mary, but when she awakes she is terrified and mentally crippled. Years later, the beautiful but sinister-looking Helen Vaughan is reported to have caused a series of...

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. All these Dreads and Drolls appeared in The Graphic . They were gathered from all sorts of sources. Most of them are strictly veridical, but it may be confessed that here and there imagination plays a small part. My favourite in the collection is, decidedly, the story of Grimaldi the Clown and his long-lost brother....

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. Young Joseph Last, having finally gone down from Oxford, wondered a good deal what he was to do next and for the years following next. He was an orphan from early boyhood, both his parents having died of typhoid within a few days of each other when Joseph was ten years old, and he remembered very little of Dunham,...

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. Machen's strong opposition to a materialistic viewpoint is obvious in many of his works, marking him as part of neo-romanticism. He was deeply suspicious of science, materialism, commerce, and Puritanism, all of which were anathema to Machen's conservative, bohemian, mystical, and ritualistic temperament. Machen's...

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the enormity of the position in all its grossness. And my excuse for these pages must be this: that though the story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest. And then, again, there are certain...

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. From the beginning of his literary career, Machen espoused a mystical belief that the humdrum ordinary world hid a more mysterious and strange world beyond. His gothic and decadent works of the 1890s concluded that the lifting of this veil could lead to madness, sex, or death, and usually a combination of all three....