A Beleaguered City: And Other Tales of the Seen and the Unseen (Canongate Classics)

By: Margaret Oliphant

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Synopsis: A haunting collection of short stories of the living and the dead by the Victorian Era Scottish author of Hester and Miss Marjoribanks. Margaret Oliphant&’s stories &“of the seen and the unseen&” are now considered some of the most remarkable explorations of the supernatural to appear in Victorian times. A prolific novelist, Oliphant said she could produce her supernatural tales &“only when they came to me.&” And indeed, they carry the eerie power of a visitation. Twilight uncertainties mingle with philosophical depth in &‘The Library Window&’; an extraordinary vision of purgatory is presented as modern city life mixed with metaphysical terror in &‘The Land of Darkness&’; and the visitations come en masse in A Beleaguered City, Oliphant&’s short novel of the returning dead. Like the old Scottish ballads where the dead and the living rub shoulders, these remarkable tales are among Oliphant&’s finest work, mixing the subtlety of Henry James with the uncanny strangeness of George MacDonald or David Lindsay. This edition of A Beleaguered City and Other Tales . . . is edited and introduced by Jenni Calder.