Although Robert Smythe Hichens wrote more than seventy books, many of which were bestsellers and were adapted for the theater and motion pictures, he is virtually forgotten today. Only two of his works remain tenuously alive: a short, grim fantasy titled "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" is still anthologized, and The Green Carnation (1894), Hichens's first mature novel, is still read by scholars interested in Oscar Wilde's aesthetic movement. This critical neglect is not entirely undeserved. Like many writers Hichens wrote his most noteworthy books at the beginning of his career, and though his later works have occasional moments of interest, they tend to repeat the ideas and situations of the earlier books; study of them is not particularly rewarding. Unlike his contemporary H.G. Wells, Hichens was not an author of many ideas, nor, despite the references to Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer that frequently appear in...