The Snuggly Satanicon

edited and translated by Brian Stableford

The current volume, edited and translated from the French by Brian Stableford, brings together fourteen stories composed in the thriving tradition of “literary Satanism” that was pioneered in the 1820s and continued throughout the century and into the twentieth, which subjected the figure to closer and more skeptical scrutiny than the theologians of the past, attempting a more clinical analysis of the idea.

Including such fiendish pieces as “A Dream of Hell” by Gustave Flaubert, which was written when the author was sixteen years old, and “Dead Man’s Dale,” a classic tale of the Devil by the great Romantic writer Charles Nodier, The Snuggly Satanicon provides a useful additional piece of a much vaster jigsaw comprised by one of the chief imaginary motifs of modern literature, helping to provide a broader glimpse, and hence a more accurate appreciation, of a bigger picture.

About Brian Stableford
Brian Stableford has been publishing fiction and non-fiction for fifty years. His fiction includes an eighteen-volume series of “tales of the biotech revolution” and a series of half a dozen metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin. His most recent non-fiction projects are New Atlantis: A Narrative History of British Scientific Romance (Wildside Press, 2016) and The Plurality of Imaginary Worlds: The Evolution of French roman scientifique (Black Coat Press, 2016); in association with the latter he has translated approximately a hundred and fifty volumes of texts not previously available in English, similarly issued by Black Coat Press.

Contents:

Dead Man’s Dale, by Charles Nodier

The Devil’s Chess Game, by S. Henry Berthoud

A Dream of Hell, by Gustave Flaubert

Second Sight, by Pierre Véron

A Fatal Legend, by Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail

Burned Tears, by Catulle Mendès

The Clock, by Jean Richepin

Another Soul Sold to the Devil, by Léon Gozlan

The Devil’s Sonata, by S. Henry Berthoud

Sincerity, by Jules Janin

A Woman in Hell, by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus

The Truth About Faust, by Maurice Renard

The Sabbat Bow, by S. Henry Berthoud

Faust’s Grandson, by Félicien Champsaur

Paperback, 234 pages. Release date: October 5, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-081-4
Price: US$16.95

Also available, edited by Brian Stableford: The Snuggly Satyricon (Snuggly Books, 2020); The Snuggly Sirenicon (Snuggly Books, 2021).