Melmoth the Wanderer

Written by an eccentric Anglican curate, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the terrors of the Gothic novel to a new fever pitch of intensity. Its tormented villain seeks a victim to release from his fatal pact with the devil, and Maturin's bizarre narrative structure whirls the reader from rural Ireland to an idyllic Indian island, from a London madhouse to the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition.