Melmoth the Wanderer empty. They follow Melmoth's tracks to the top of a cliff, and see his handkerchief on a crag below them. "Exchanging looks of silent and unutterable horror", they return home. Honoré de Balzac wrote a follow-up story ("Melmoth Reconciled") and considered Maturin's novel worthy of a place among Molière's "Don Juan", Goethe's "Faust" and Lord Byron's "Manfred" as one of the supreme icons of modern European literature. Oscar Wilde, during his travels after release from prison, called himself Sebastian Melmoth, deriving this pseudonym from the title character in his great-uncle's novel and from Saint Sebastian. Historian of English literature Walter
Melmoth the Wanderer Melmoth the Wanderer Melmoth the Wanderer is an 1820 Gothic novel by Irish playwright, novelist and clergyman Charles Maturin. The novel's title character is a scholar who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life, and searches the world for someone who will take over the pact for him, in a manner reminiscent of the Wandering Jew. The novel is composed of a series of nested stories-within-stories, gradually revealing the story of Melmoth's life. The novel offers social commentary on early-19th-century England, and denounces Roman Catholicism in favour of the virtues of Protestantism. John