Richard Marsh Exhibition: It's Creepy in Crawley!

Richard Marsh was, in his day, one of the best-known authors in Britain. His proto-horror novel The Beetle (1897) rivalled Dracula. As someone remarked, friends are better than critics, and now there's an exhibition dedicated to Marsh's life and work. Here is the link, where you will find the facts:

The Beetle, published in 1897, is the tale of a shape-changing Egyptian creature that comes to London seeking revenge on a leading MP, which greatly outsold its close rival Dracula (published the same year). In 1910 Marsh's publishers felt able to call him 'the most popular living author'. 

A lesson there, I think, for any writer who worries that they've failed to win recognition. It is, to say the least, ephemeral in most cases.

The author Robert Aickman was the grandson of Richard Marsh. He was the only child of a rather odd and unhappy union between Marsh's daughter Mabel and the much older William Aickman.