Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties

A literary scholar, drawn into the bustling world of late‑Victorian writers, becomes obsessed with the vanished poet Enoch Soames. Soames, a modest and self‑conscious figure, makes a desperate bargain with a supernatural force, hoping to secure a place in literary history. The narrator follows his frantic quest, tracing Soames through the bohemian cafés, the avant‑garde circles of Paris and London, and the eccentric personalities that define the era.

The pact transports Soames far beyond his own time, landing him in a modern library where he expects to find his name etched in the annals of criticism. Instead, the shelves are silent, his existence erased from every catalogue. Confronted with the stark reality of oblivion, Soames’s story becomes a witty meditation on fame, memory, and the fleeting nature of artistic ambition, all told with a dry, affectionate humor that captures the quirks of both the 1890s and the present day.