The Mummy!

The Mummy! by Jane C. Loudon (1827)

The Mummy!, by Jane C. Loudon, opens in the year 2126, when England lives under an absolute Catholic monarchy after cycling through revolutions, anarchy, aristocracy, and democracy before settling into despotism paired with restored Catholicism. The narrative recounts how a reluctant prince refused the crown but his daughter accepted it, becoming an effective queen who restored order through codified, comprehensible laws; her line eventually passes the throne to her indolent niece, Claudia, who reigns passively for three years until Roderick, King of Ireland, invades Wales and marches on London. The capital's assault is repelled by young Captain Edmund Montagu and the veteran Duke of Exeter, and Edmund is dispatched to lead England's army against invading Greek and German emperors. The story shifts to Edmund's father, Sir Ambrose Montagu, and his contemplative younger son Edric, who has been drawn by his confessor Father Morris into speculation about reanimating the dead, particularly the mummy of Cheops, said to lie preserved in a newly discovered pyramid chamber. Edric is joined in this scheme by his eccentric tutor Dr. Entwerfen. Meanwhile, the Duke of Cornwall plans to marry his daughter Elvira to Edmund and his niece Rosabella to Edric, but Edric, having no love for Rosabella, refuses; when Sir Ambrose insists on the match and gives him an ultimatum, Edric leaves rather than comply, using the quarrel as pretext to depart for Egypt with Dr. Entwerfen, funded and aided by Father Morris and Lord Gustavus de Montfort in London. Sir Ambrose, meanwhile, is left to regret his harshness, while Rosabella's jealous, ambitious nature and the mysterious shadow over her late father's reputation are established, alongside Elvira's tepid feelings for Edmund and the arrival of the charming but volatile stranger Henry Seymour. In Egypt—now a thoroughly modernized colonial landscape of railways, factories, and macadamized roads surrounding the ancient, still-imposing Pyramids—Edric and Dr. Entwerfen, guided by a local named Samuel, descend into the Great Pyramid and reach the tomb of Cheops. There, overcome by dread and fascination, Edric applies Dr. Entwerfen's galvanic apparatus to the royal mummy. Amid thunder and supernatural light, Cheops revives, seizes Edric, and Edric faints from terror. Recovering to find their balloon vanished, Edric and the doctor are arrested by suspicious Egyptian authorities and placed on trial for sorcery, based on witness accounts of the mummy's escape. Edric argues English legal principles in their defense while Dr. Entwerfen defiantly and impolitically confesses their true purpose and explains his theory that life resides in the nervous system, further horrifying the court. The judge, learning Edric is brother to the famous general Montagu, softens and remands them to prison rather than immediate punishment. Confined together, Edric and the doctor reflect ruefully on their ordeal and its costs, while the reanimated Cheops wanders the transformed landscape outside, disoriented, grief-stricken over his lost world, his father, and his beloved Arsinöe, and consumed by memories of violence and guilt, before spotting the abandoned balloon and preparing to make use of it.

By Jane C. Loudon · First published 1827 · Genre: Science Fiction, Gothic/Horror, Social and Political Commentary · 32 chapters · 195,424 words

First lines

In the year 2126, England enjoyed peace and tranquillity under the absolute dominion of a female sovereign. Numerous changes had taken place for some centuries in the political state of the country, and several forms of government had been successively adopted and destroyed, till, as is generally the case after violent revolutions, they all settled down into an absolute monarchy. The religion of the country was mutable as its government; and in the end, by adopting Catholicism, it seemed to have arrived at nearly the same result: despotism in the state, indeed, naturally produces despotism in religion; the implicit faith and passive obedience required in the one case, being the best of all possible preparatives for the absolute submission of both mind and body necessary in the other.

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science fiction · time travel · future · mummy · resurrection · adventure · romance · ancient Egypt · utopian · technology · dystopian · social commentary

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