The Maniac: A Realistic Study of Madness from the Maniac's Point of View

First published in London by Rebman in 1909 and reprinted there by Watts in 1932. The book was first published in the U.S. as THE MANIAC: A REALISTIC STUDY OF MADNESS FROM THE MANIAC'S POINT OF VIEW in 1937 by The American Psychical Institute with a new 14-page "editorial introduction" by Hereward Carrington, Director of The American Psychical Institute, who notes that both UK editions were "virtually suppressed -- on the ground that it was 'dangerous reading' for the general public. The result was that the book remained almost totally unknown outside a limited circle, and in America it was never issued at all." Some copies of the American edition were distributed by the David McKay Company of Philadelphia, either simultaneously with the API's distribution, or subsequent to it. McKay's copies have their imprint on the spine panel and their name rubber-stamped on the title page. Although limited to 1050 copies, this second U.S. with Mahlon Blaine's incredible surreal black and white illustrations reproduced throughout the narrative is virtually unknown as well. This "account of a young woman's sudden descent into madness. Her experience sounds like what we would now describe as paranoid schizophrenia, which typically has an onset in early adulthood. Adding a layer of ambiguity and richness to her tale is the narrator's strong interest in the occult. Her terrifying and bizarre adventure lends itself both to a psychological and an occult interpretation. Another ambiguity concerns the genre of the account. Whether it really is true (as the author and publisher insist), it reads like a thriller (though its forceful journalistic simplicity make it atypical of the period). Is it fiction or nonfiction? Many of the contemporary reviews quoted in the beginning of this edition explicitly refer to it as a novel; and the library holding at Oxford lists it as fiction. It belongs perhaps to the same borderland as Catherine Crowe's THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE, the main differences being that this is written throughout in the first person, and is much more fully developed. A fascinating tale, however one approaches it."