Danse Macabre

by Paul LaCroix, Brian M. Stableford (Translator)

In Danse Macabre, set in 1438, the sinister Macabre lives in the cemetery of the Saint-Innocents in Paris, sleeping in a coffin with his wife Giborne. He has amassed a fortune through producing the eponymous play in a ghastly theater made of bones, and selling clothes stolen from the dead. His partner, Benjamin, falls in love with the wife of a nobleman, and plots to get rid of her husband, setting in motion a series of events marked by death, torture and disease against the background of the most sinister ossuary of all time. Danse macabre (1832) is not just a novel of great historical interest by Alexandre Dumas' best collaborator; it remains a powerful narrative, possessed of admirable intricacy and dramatic tension, as well as holding a horrific impact undiminished by time. Even today, its raw ferocity remains unmatched.

Genres: Horror

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 26, 2012

About the author

Paul Lacroix (April 27, 1806 – October 16, 1884) was a French author and journalist. He is known best by his pseudonym P.L. Jacob, bibliophile, or Le Bibliophile Jacob, suggested by his great interest in libraries and books generally.

Lacroix was born in Paris, the son of a novelist. He was a prolific and varied writer, composing more than twenty historical romances as well as a variety of serious historical works, including histories of Napoleon III and of the Czar Nicholas I of Russia.

He was the joint author with Ferdinand Séré of a five-volume work, Le moyen âge et la renaissance (1847), a profusely illustrated standard work on the manners, customs and dress of the Renaissance. He also wrote many monographs on phases of the history of culture, including Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. Someone using the name Pierre Dufour published an exhaustive six-volume Histoire de la prostitution (1851–1854), which has always been attributed to Lacroix. His works concerning bibliography were also numerous, as was his periodical Revue universelle des arts, which he initiated in 1855. In 1855 he was appointed librarian of the Arsenal Library, Paris.

Reviews

[The Literary Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful. A theater made of bones, beauty, love, jealousy, persecution, revenge, child snatching, eclipses, ossuaries, lepers, opulent clothing, plagues, aristocrats, gypsies, they just don't make 'em like this anymore. Great cover art by Daniele Serra.

[Victor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe even as low as one star, tbh. Sloppily constructed and often written in an obnoxiously archaic style, mostly the stilted dialogue; enlivened by its phenomenally dark imagery, but deeply marred by its load-bearing antisemitic subplot, which revolves around the blood libel being described in horrific terms. I can't say I regret having read this despite its massive flaws--that dark imagery is truly twisted, especially for the 1830s, and unlike the dialogue, the narration virtually sings--but I can't really recommend it to anyone to read.