Description

The Mummy’s Foot: And Other Fantastic Tales written by Théophile Gautier and edited by S. T. Joshi

Paperback – Hippocampus Press – 2018 – 420 pages

This volume of the Classics of Gothic Horror series gathers the weird and fantastic tales of Théophile Gautier (1811–1872), a pioneering French author whose weird work includes such distinctive tales as the Egyptian fantasies “One of Cleopatra’s Nights” and “The Mummy’s Foot,” the classic vampire story “Clarimonde,” and an entrancing novella of psychic transference, “Avatar.”

Gautier’s tales feature a haunting fusion of eroticism and weirdness, in consonance with his view that the human female constituted the most exalted form of beauty in all creation. The evocative translations of Lafcadio Hearn and Edgar Saltus have been used in this volume.