Frankenstein wasn’t the only classic horror novel created by a woman.
Within a decade of the 1818 publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, another Englishwoman invented a foundational work of science fiction. Seventeen-year-old Jane Webb Loudon took up the theme of reanimation, moved it three hundred years into the future, and applied it to Cheops, an ancient Egyptian mummy. Unlike Shelley’s horrifying, death-dealing monster, this revivified creature bears the wisdom of the ages and is eager to share his insights with humanity. Cheops boards a hot-air balloon and travels to 22nd-century England, where he sets about remedying the ills of a corrupt government.
In recounting Cheops’ attempts to put the futuristic society to rights, the young author offers a fascinating portrait of the preoccupations of her own era as well as some remarkably prescient predictions of technological advances. The Mummy! envisions a world in which automatons perform surgery, undersea tunnels connect England and Ireland, weather-control devices provide crop irrigation, and messages are transmitted with the speed of cannonball fire. The first novel to feature the concept of a living mummy, this pioneering tale offers an engaging mix of comedy, politics, and science fiction.
Other books in the Haunted Library of Horror Classics series:
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Beetle by Richard Marsh
Vathek by William Beckford
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
The Parasite and Other Tales of Terror by Arthur Conan Doyle
Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
Author: Jane Webb
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 04/05/2022
Series: Haunted Library Horror Classics
Pages: 560
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.43h x 5.43w x 1.57d
ISBN: 9781464215285
Language: English
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