The Rose of Death and Other Mysterious Delusions

Born in 1846, Julian Hawthorne was the only son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America's foremost writers. His parents, mindful of the difficulty of making a living as a penman, did not encourage their son to become a writer; but early successes with his fiction convinced Julian that he could achieve independence with his pen. It was a delusion he was frequently to regret in the years to come.

As a child, Julian had been fascinated by the supernatural, and his fiction dealt with the mysterious, the occult, and the Gothic. Much of his vast output, spanning more than fifty years, contains elements of the mysterious and the horrific. Yet while Julian was a prolific writer, his works fell into almost complete neglect following his death, overshadowed by the literary influence of his father and a scandal in Julian's later life.

Now Jessica Amanda Salmonson has selected eight of Julian Hawthorne's finest supernatural tales for inclusion in THE ROSE OF DEATH. They range fom the early vampire classic 'Ken's Mystery' to the Gothic horror of the novella 'Kildhurm's Oak', and cover a period of thirty-eight years. Included also is an extensive introductory monograph, which presents a full and vivid portrait of 'The Black Prince'.