Golgotha: A Phantasm, by Charles D. Gardette

Illustrations by Virgil Finlay.

Published by Gerry De La Ree, 1973.
Hardcover bound boards with gilt-stamped black cloth. No dustjacket issued.
Softcover staplebound cardstock wrapper, 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch, 12 pages.
[Limited to 450 softcover copies, 20 copies bound in hardcovers.]

Front of Hardcover

Front of Softcover

Charles Desmarais Gardette is probably best remembered as the perpetrator of the Edgar Allan Poe hoax, 'The Fire-Fiend'. 'The Fire-Fiend' was composed and first published in 1859, and the text of this poem and the story behind it were covered earlier in the booklet, The Fire-Fiend and The Raven.

But Gardette composed at least one other fantastic poem in the Poe style, 'Golgotha, A Phantasm', which appeared in his 1866 book. In this poem, published by Gerry de la Ree for the first time as a separate booklet, Gardette uses a skull in much the same fashion as he did a fire-fiend in his earlier Poe hoax, and as Poe used a raven in his most memorable of poetic efforts. The opening stanzas of 'Golgotha' are particularly effective and create an atmosphere of horror worthy of Poe. 'Golgotha' is accompanied by a seven small black and white drawings by Virgil Finlay. Some of these sketches date from 1931 and none was done later that 1937.