Each year I try to find some horror to read for Halloween, and this time I am reading the Standard Ebooks edition of Melmoth the Wanderer, an 1820 Gothic novel by Charles Robert Maturin. It's great fun so far. The Wikipedia article about the novel convinced me to go ahead and read it, e.g. "The novel was described by H. P. Lovecraft as "an enormous stride in the evolution of the horror-tale", and Maurice Richardson also wrote an essay for Lilliput magazine praising Melmoth. Melmoth the Wanderer was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the 13 best supernatural horror novels. Thomas M. Disch placed Melmoth the Wanderer at number four in his list of classic fantasy stories. Devendra P. Varma described Melmoth the Wanderer as "the crowning achievement of the Gothic Romance". Michael Moorcock has described Melmoth the Wanderer as "one of my favourites".
If you aren't familiar with the website, Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-run organization that attempts to prepare excellent ebooks of public domain works. Here is the site's horror titles, including Dracula, works by H.P. Lovecraft, etc.
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