The Albigenses, Vol 1

by Charles Robert Maturin

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1824 edition. Excerpt: ...man, nor the last dreary array of a shrouded corse, but a shadowy envelopment he could not describe. Odo, collecting his spirits when his head was averted, stamped for his attendants to spread for supper; they prepared to do so, but first applied themselves to the recovery of the squire, who recovered only to a state of idiotism. This Odo did not much regard--the table was spread, and the attendants were prompt; but Odo observed one more prompt than them all, his eye followed the swift silent figure as it flitted around, and he saw who filled his trencher ere he could swallow its contents, and made his goblet sparkle to the brim when he thought he had drained it, so over officious was this mute attendant. The confessor himself avouched that there was one more in the chamber than he could reckon; and though he began and ended the tale over and over again, still there was one in the chamber who completely perplexed his calculation, and whom, though he saw, he never could count among the number--he ever saw twelve, but could number but eleven. The confessor betook him to his beads, and. my kinsman to his bed, (the poor squire being in a lamentable state); but he had not rested long when he was awoke by some one softly and lightly pacing round his bed, and ever and anon adjusting the clothes. Odo started up, and beheld the same shapeless, nameless thing, employed, as it seemed, officiously around his bed; and what was worse, as the bed was but narrow, the face without lineaments, the aspect not to be thought of without horror, even in the silence and absence of the grave, was now close to his--the dead one was his silent gliding chamberlain. There was no standing this. Odo sprung from the bed, roused his confessor, who was sleeping on the...

821 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2013

About the author

Charles Robert Maturin was an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained by the Church of Ireland) and a writer of gothic plays and novels.

His first three works were published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy and were critical and commercial failures. They did, however, catch the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommended Maturin's work to Lord Byron. With the help of these two literary luminaries, the curate's play, Bertram (first staged on 9 May 1816 at the Drury Lane for 22 nights) with Edmund Kean starring in the lead role as Bertram, saw a wider audience and became a success. Financial success, however, eluded Maturin, as the play's run coincided with his father's unemployment and another relative's bankruptcy, both of them assisted by the fledgling writer. To make matters worse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge publicly denounced the play as dull and loathsome, and "melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind", going nearly so far as to decry it as atheistic. Coleridge's comments on Bertram can also be found in 'Biographia Literaria', chapter 23. The Church of Ireland took note of these and earlier criticisms and, having discovered the identity of Bertram's author (Maturin had shed his nom de plume to collect the profits from the play), subsequently barred Maturin's further clerical advancement. Forced to support his wife and four children by writing (his salary as curate was £80-90 per annum, compared to the £1000 he made for Bertram), he switched back from playwright to novelist after a string of his plays met with failure. One of his grandsons, Basil W. Maturin, a Chaplain at Oxford University, died in the sinking of RMS Lusitania in 1915.

Charles Robert Maturin died in Dublin on 30 October 1824. Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire later expressed fondness for Maturin's work, particularly his most famous novel, Melmoth the Wanderer.