The weird of the wanderer Being the papyrus records of some incidents in one of the previous lives of Mr. Nicholas Crabbe

About the book

The book begins with letters describing the discovery of an Armenian rock tomb, a preserved body, and papyri that seem to demand scholarly explanation. A modern revolver and a recently manufactured watch found among the ancient objects make an ordinary account of the tomb impossible. The supposed records connect Nicholas Crabbe with identities reaching into antiquity, opening a fantastic narrative of previous lives, occult knowledge, and travel across historical boundaries. Rolfe and Pirie-Gordon present the work through the names Prospero and Caliban, surrounding its imaginative events with the apparatus of correspondence and learned investigation. The contrast between confident documentary detail and extraordinary claims is central to the experience. Readers enter an invented archive whose careful descriptions continually intensify, rather than dispel, its impossibilities.

• Identity across time
• Occult knowledge
• Documents and belief

Why read it

The elaborate found-document frame makes the anachronistic objects into an engaging puzzle before the fantastic narrative unfolds.

English William Rider and Son edition of 1912, presented under the names Prospero and Caliban