Charles Nodier 1 hr 10 min read

A descent into nightmare: shifting dreams within dreams, demons of the night, and the shimmering terrors of sleep, from a pioneer of the French fantastic.

Charles Nodier's 1821 work (in the original French, 'Smarra ou les démons de la nuit') is a landmark of Romantic fantasy and horror. Lyrical, feverish, hugely influential. Read it for an early masterpiece of the literature of dreams, a hallucinatory prose-poem of nightmares that shaped the whole Gothic fantastic tradition.

In its time

Published in 1821, during the 1820s, tales of mesmerism, ghosts, and the fantastic voyage flourish in the romantic imagination.

Reading it

1 hr 10 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).