Sez Maureen O’Brien: “This ghost story is pretty fun. Lost treasure! A wronged heiress! Communication from beyond the grave!”
Sez Bibliophilia Obscura:
“The purely supernatural has its place in O’Brien’s stories as well. The Pot of Tulips effectively retells a story, as old as antiquity, of a miser who in death reveals through signs and symbols the location of his hidden fortune.
…
O’Brien writes most of the stories in the persona, apparently well know to him, of the comfortable bachelor, ensconced in his cozy lodgings, be it a haunted boarding house or a decaying Dutch mansion in upper Manhattan. Late evenings with cigar or opium, discussing supernatural possibilities with companions set a cozy tone, which will be upended by a shift of reality as objects of speculation become all too real. It would be wrong to judge O’Brien’s themes as hoary simply because we have encountered them in more well known authors who followed him down these speculative paths. Taken as exemplars of early nineteenth-century speculative fiction, these stories are still worth a read on a chill winter’s night.”
The Pot Of Tulips
By Fitz James O’Brien; Read by Maureen O’Brien
1 |MP3| – Approx. 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: October 30, 2005
Source: Archive.org
A lost treasure, a lady in distress, and a message from beyond the grave! This 1855 story is an earlier appearance of Harry Escott from “What Was It? — A Mystery“, and features the same entertaining mixture of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. First published in Harper’s, Nov. 1855.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Fiction audiobooks usually can’t hold my attention without dramatization, but Maureen’s voice is so pleasant, like music itself, that I was easily drawn in and hooked to a very good story.