Charles Robert Maturin

Charles Robert Maturin, His Life and Works, is announced as to be presented for public criticism at the University of Helsingfors on May 12:th 1923. The preface says that the completion of the book was retarded by circumstances unforeseen in the winter of 1914, when the writer collected most of its materials. The preface writer has not, since then, had any opportunity of visiting England and has been unable to augment and verify these materials.

The text says that in autumn 1824 appeared the last of Maturin's lucubrations, a historical novel called The Albigenses, intended to be but the first series of a great trilogy. The text presents count Bertram as a man whom Lord Aldobrand has contrived to overthrow, who has been changed from an admired and accomplished courtier into a captain of a gang of robbers, of uncommon ferocity. The Tale of the Indians is once interrupted by two other tales of considerable length. A fellow-traveller reads the Tale of Guzman's Family, in which Guzman is an old merchant of Seville who has made an enormous fortune out of nothing.