Vincent O’Sullivan

Vincent O’Sullivan (1868–1940), born in New Zealand and later at home in London’s decadent circles, wrote fiction of morbid grace that impressed Wilde, Dowson, and Conrad. His supernatural work, long scattered in periodicals, is a distinct branch of fin-de-siècle weird literature.

About

Vincent O’Sullivan’s supernatural fiction, praised by Robert Aickman for its guilt-soaked atmosphere, runs from pact stories and psychic vampirism in A Book of Bargains (1896) to the melancholy novella “Master of Fallen Years” (1921). A friend of Wilde and the fin-de-siècle decadents, O’Sullivan writes cruelty and morbid grace in a register nearer Continental symbolism than the English antiquarian ghost story.

Edition Details

• Limited to 400 numbered copies; first edition gathering Vincent O'Sullivan's complete supernatural fiction.
• Bound in pictorial cloth in a dust jacket; cover Master of Fallen Years: Complete Supernatural Stories of Vincent O'Sullivan by Steven Stapleton.
• Edited and introduced by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
• Month of publication (June 1995) from copyright page (FantLab photograph).