The Mummy S Foot

A chilling tale from French literature, "The Mummy's Foot" is a masterful short story that delves into the realm of horror. Gautier's storytelling, offers readers a haunting journey into the unknown, showcasing the timeless allure of classic horror tales.

I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France. You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he must have his chambre au moyen âge. There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the ware-room of the tapestry maker, the laboratory of the chemist, and the studio of the painter: in all those gloomy dens where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters the most manifestly ancient thing is dust. The cobwebs are more authentic than the gimp laces, and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from America.

It is an excellent horror book for individuals who are going to overcome horror.

I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France. You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he must have his chambre au moyen âge.

In this quirky and surprising history, Alan Krell addresses the absurd and abject, the banal and the nastily subversive, and the romantic and the fetishistic, as he describes the appearance of the foot in literature, photography, art, sport and film. Discover the gothic tales of French writer Théophile Gautier, the disturbing photographs of Jacques-André Boiffard and the religious paintings by Giotto, Tintoretto and Caravaggio that exalt the foot. Marvel at the sporting exploits of the elite runners such as Abede Bikila and Zola Budd, and the surprising representation of the foot in film such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Kill Bill: Volume 1. Presenting new images and ideas of the foot in a tantalizing way, The Mummy's Foot and the Big Toe is for all those with an interest in the humanities, languages, social sciences and anthropology. --From front flap.

This volume gathers the weird and fantastic tales of Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), a pioneering French author whose weird work includes such distinctive tales as the Egyptian fantasies "One of Cleopatra's Nights" and "The Mummy's Foot," the classic vampire story "Clarimonde," and an entrancing novella of psychic transference, "Avatar." Gautier's tales feature a haunting fusion of eroticism and weirdness, in consonance with his view that the human female constituted the most exalted form of beauty in all creation. The evocative translations of Lafcadio Hearn and Edgar Saltus have been used in this volume. The Classics of Gothic Horror series seeks to reprint novels and stories from the leading writers of weird fiction over the past two centuries or more. Ever since the Gothic novels of the late 18th century, weird fiction has been a slender but provocative contribution to weird fiction. Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, the Victorian ghost story writers, the "titans" of the early twentieth century (Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft), the Weird Tales writers, and many others contributed to the development and enrichment of weird fiction as a literary genre, and their work deserves to be enshrined in comprehensive, textually accurate editions. S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on weird fiction, has done exactly that in establishing this series. Using scholarly resources honed over decades of wide-ranging research, he has assembled volumes featuring not only the complete weird writings of the authors in question, but exhaustive bio-critical introductions and bibliographical data.

Pierre Jules Theophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and literary critic. He was a contributor to various journals, most notably to "La Presse." He was director of "Revue de Paris" from 1851-1856. During this time, Gautier left "La Presse" and became a journalist for "Le Moniteur Universel." Gautier acquired the editorship of influential review "L'Artiste" in 1856. In 1862 he was elected chairman of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. During the Franco-Prussian war, Gautier made his way back to Paris. He remained with his family throughout the invasion and the aftermath of the Commune, eventually dying in 1872 of a cardiac disease. "The Mummy's Foot" -- the title story in this collection -- is a gothic tale, published in French as "Le Pied de Momie." It relates the adventures of a man who buys the 3,000 year old foot of Princess Hermonthis in a Parisian curio shop. Gautier has a fascination with Ancient Egypt as well as an obsession with mortality, decay, and the passage of time. When Princess Hermonthis takes him to her time and place of burial, he asks for her hand from her father, who flatly refuses because of his concern for durability, and the transience of the young man's existence compared to that of a three-thousand year old girl.