The Beetle
By Richard MarshPublisher Description
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Dracula—and outsold it six to one that year. Like Dracula, the novel is steeped in the evil mysteries of an ancient horror: in this case, a mysterious ancient Egyptian creature bent on revenge.
The story is told through the sequential points of view of a group of middle-class Victorians who find themselves enmeshed in the creature’s plot. The creature, in the guise of an Egyptian man, appears in London seeking revenge against a popular member of Parliament. They soon find out that it can shape shift into other things, including women; that it can control minds and use hypnosis; and that it won’t stop at anything to get the revenge it seeks. The heroes are soon caught in a whirlwind of chase scenes, underground laboratories, secret cults, and more as they race to foil the creature.
While The Beetle didn’t earn the lasting popularity of Stoker’s counterpart, it remains a strange and unique morsel of Victorian sensationalist fiction.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities36 Reviews
Em
Created 3 months agoCozmicDotCom
Created 5 months ago
Lea M
Created 7 months ago
“Released the same time as Dracula and more popular at the time this is a story with a complex storytelling method of accounts…diaries overlapping! Creepy, dramatic and with an array of characters it keeps you invested to the sudden and surprising conclusion!”bethanyhannah
Created 8 months agoFaith
Created 9 months agoAbout Richard Marsh
Richard Marsh (12 October 1857 – 9 August 1915) was the pseudonym of the English author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. A best-selling and prolific author of the late 19th century and the Edwardian period, Marsh is best known now for his supernatural thriller novel The Beetle, which was published the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and was initially even more popular, outselling Dracula six times over. The Beetle remained in print until 1960. Marsh produced nearly 80 volumes of fiction and numerous short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance and humour. Many of these have been republished recently, beginning with The Beetle in 2004. Marsh's grandson Robert Aickman was a notable writer of short "strange stories".
Other books by Richard Marsh
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