The Necromancer: or The Tale of the Black Forest

The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest is a Gothic novel first published in 1794, translated into English in 1927. It is one of the seven 'horrid novels' lampooned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, once thought not to exist except in the text of Northanger Abbey.

The novel consists of a series of lurid tales of hauntings, violence, killings and the supernatural featuring the adventures of Hermann and Helfried and the mysterious wizard Volkert the Necromancer, who has seemingly come back from the dead, set in the Black Forest in Germany.

"For descriptions of 'horrid' episodes, for sheer stylistic fervour in the handling of the supernatural, the work can rank high among its contemporaries."--Michael Sadleir