I am going to plead the case for the inclusion of William Meinhold and specifically his novel Sidonia the Sorceress. I came across this fantastic piece of speculative fiction whilst leafing through a book (I forget the title) which took an unusual biographical route of examining a subject by what was found on his bookshelf.
The subject in question was Oscar Wilde and the title that leapt out at me was Sidonia the Sorceress. It is only available in rather expensive, limited-print run copies, however the entire wonderful text is available online from Project Gutenberg.
I can tell you very little about the author save that he was German and that Sidonia appears to have been written sometime in the 19th century. I confess a small part of my reason for posting is to see if any of you good people can tell me more? A google search produces refreshingly few results!
As to the work itself. The concept is wonderful and I find Meinhold's style fantastically economical, colourful and really first rate.
I would love to hear from anyone else on this.
Many thanks for reading and I look forward to contributing regularly to these forums (this is my first post).
Chris Wheatley