Khaled (Wildside Fantasy)

In 1909, F. Marion Crawford was one of the most widely read novelists of the English-speaking world. His fame was such that when he became seriously ill in March of that year, his progress was reported on the front page of The New York Times on a daily basis for the last week of his life. His obituary spilled over onto page 2 of the Times. In the Italian village of Sant ’Agnello, where he lived, all the shops were immediately closed upon his death, the door of each bearing a sign saying “closed for public mourning.”

He had written over 40 novels by the time of his death, as well as a play and several histories of Italy.

Today, like Robert W. Chambers, Edward Lucas White, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, he is little remembered for the bulk of his work, which like theirs consisted largely of romances and historical fiction. The works of these writers that have survived the test of time are for the most part fantasies and tales of horror. Today, Crawford is remembered to some extent for a few fantasy novels and the ghostly tales in The Complete Wandering Ghosts (forthcoming from Wildside Press).

Khaled (1891) is perhaps the most effective of Crawford's fantasy novels. It's an Arabian fantasy sometimes compared to Beckford's Vathek, and it concerns a genie who is made mortal as a punishment.