A Book of Bargains by Vincent O'Sullivan

What little compassion O'Sullivan shows is always for the murderer, never for the victim, and only before he commits his crime, never after. Most commit crimes, primarily murders, usually with a knife. One was a book of verse entitled Poems, and the other was this collection of fiction, The Book of Bargains.It is a grim little book written in cool, clear prose, consisting of seven stories of people who bargain with the devil, either literally or figuratively. In 1896, Smithers published O’Sullivan’s first two books, each with a frontispiece by Beardsley. ““He was really very pleasant,” Oscar remarked, “for one who treats life from the standpoint of the tomb.” O’Sullivan was notably generous to Wilde in the years following his imprisonment it was he who gave Oscar the money to visit Lord Alfred Douglas for four months in Naples. Wilde considered O’Sullivan a good dinner companion, in spite of the air of melancholy about him. A rich young American, the heir to a coffee fortune, he studied briefly at Oxford before leaving for London to become “a man of letters.” He frequented-as did most of the decadents-Leonard Smithers’ bookshop, and it was there he met Pater, Yeats, Dowson, Beardsley, and Wilde. Vincent O’Sullivan was one of the last of the decadents. Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. 'When I Was Dead' (1905), 'Verschoyle's House' (1915) and 'The Burned House' (1916) are ghost stories, while 'Will' is a tale of psychic vampirism. It contains the pact-with the devil story 'The Bargain of Rupert Orange', and The Business of Madame Jahn and 'My Enemy and Myself', which both feature reanimated corpses. O'Sullivan produced his first collection of supernatural fiction, A Book of Bargains, in 1896. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde (to whom in his disgrace he was often generous), Leonard Smithers, Aubrey Beardsley and other fin-de-siècle figures.

His works dealt with the morbid and decadent.

The entire family was ruined, and Vincent was destitute for the remaining years of his life. He lived comfortably in London, traveling often to France, until in 1909 he lost his income from the family coffee business when his brother Percy made a spectacularly mistimed futures gamble at the New York Coffee Exchange. Born in New York City to Eugene and Christine O'Sullivan, he began his education in the New York public school system and completed it in Britain. Vincent O'Sullivan was an American short story writer, poet and critic.

A Book of Bargains by Vincent O'Sullivan