Lucas Malet, The Gateless Barrier

Talia Schaffer (Queens College, CUNY)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1900

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Gateless Barrier (1900), by Lucas Malet (Mary St Leger Kingsley Harrison), is both a love story and a ghost story. The writer Laurence Rivers inherits a family mansion from his ominous cousin Montagu. He discovers a locked “yellow drawing-room”, left intact with its early-nineteenth-century feminine trifles (embroidery, letters, music). The room is haunted by a lovely ghost, Agnes, and Laurence is the reborn version of her original lover. Although Laurence tempts Agnes to return to the world of the living, in the end she vanishes, leaving him possessed by unfulfillable yearning. In this novel it is the ghostly woman who haunts the house of fiction. Agnes's creative work overwhelms Laurence's essays and the decadent …

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145 words

Citation: Schaffer, Talia. "The Gateless Barrier". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 January 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=762, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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