Imbued with a sense of light-hearted cynicism, literary crictic Jules
Janin (1804-1874) penned a vast number of eccentric and sometimes
improvised fantastic and horror stories, now mostly forgotten. This
first-ever American collection gathers a sampler of his unusual talent,
as exemplified by the eponymous tale about a dead man kept alive by
magnetism, published several months before Poe's "The Facts in the Case
of M. Valdemar" (1845). Other tales gathered here include fake folk
legends, paradoxical ghost stories in the vein of ETA Hoffmann, and
surreal reflections on the supernatural nature of music. "Janin was
probably closer to Poe in spirit, although his ambition took him in a
different direction." Brian Stableford.