Author Description

The Necromancer attempts to capitalise on the vogue of the German setting for the Gothic, and was quite likely no translation at all but written in English. Isabelle Thorpe in Jane Austin's Northanger Abbey reads out a list of intended future reading matter in which is included The Necromancer. This novel is filled with "Gothic" conjuring up of spirits, the theme of incest, the obsession with one person's power over another, sepulchral settings (a visit to a dungeon, the company of the rotting dead - in short, the horrid stuff of the Gothic novel. It is worthy of note that Matthew Lewis' famous novel The Monk appeared two years after The Necromancer and makes use of many of the same Gothic materials, though with more abandon than in "Flammenberg's" book. The Necromancer is at pains to pass itself off as a story based on real fact; repeatedly the narrator insists that the events "chronicled" have a basis in truth.