Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Maturin

"I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth for one hundred and fifty years."

John Melmoth, a student in Dublin, discovers the story of his ancestor who sold his soul to the devil for 150 years of life. The ancestor, Melmoth the Wanderer, now roams the earth searching for someone desperate enough to take over his bargain and release him from his damnation. The novel is a series of nested stories revealing Melmoth's visits to the suffering in prisons, madhouses, and the Inquisition.

Maturin's complex novel is the last great work of the classic gothic school. It is a profound study of suffering and the limits of the human spirit, influencing writers from Balzac to Wilde.