The Dedalus Meyrink Reader contains both material that has not previously been published in English and extracts from works that have already appeared in English. The new material comprises the stories from the anthology Fledermäuse (Bats), apart from ‘Meister Leonhard’, which is contained in The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: 1890-2000, ‘The Clockmaker’, a chapter from the unfinished novel The Alchemist’s House and three autobiographical articles. Fledermäuse, published in 1916, signifies a move away from the style of Meyrink’s early stories, with their emphasis on the satirical, the grotesque and the macabre, to a more intense engagement with the occult; some also reflect his response to the horrors of the First World War.
The autobiographical articles were written in the later 1920s, though ‘The Pilot’, unpublished in Meyrink’s lifetime, was probably written in 1930/31. The longest of these pieces, ‘The Transformation of the Blood’ goes into great detail about Meyrink’s lifelong preoccupation with esoteric knowledge, especially yoga.
These articles are followed by extracts from Meyrink’s five novels, as well as four stories from his earlier period, which were collected in Des deutschen Spießers Wunderhorn (The German Bourgeois’ Magic Horn, 1913).