Author Description

This superb collection of six fantastical stories, set mainly in Italy in different historical periods, is pervaded by the theme of alien spirits representing good and evil. They are true classics of imagination and descriptive power by an English writer who numbered among her friends and admirers Robert Browning, George Bernard Shaw, James McNeill Whistler, Edith Wharton and Desmond MacCarthy. Prince Alberic and the snake lady - the lonely child of a ducal family succumbs to the allure of an ancient family legend. A Wedding Chest - from the painted lid of a fifteenth-century coffer is reconstructed a story of love and assassination. Amour Dure - the tale of Medea Malatesta, wife in succession to three dukes whose deaths she arranges, and whose beauty holds men's love though they die under torture. A Wicked Voice - a Norwegian composer's styles is corrupted by a ghostly voice haunting the back canals and palaces of Venice. The Legend of Madame Krasinska - how the beautiful young American wife of a Polish Count is saved from suicide by the ghost of a beggar woman. The Virgin of the Seven Daggars - the intricacies of a dream within a dream.