J. MacLaren Cobban

A Scottish author of some interest for Master of his Fate (October-December 1889 Blackwood's Magazine; 1890), whose protagonist, tortured by the need vampirically to drain the life energy of others to maintain his own Immortality, confesses all to an expert in the field of animal magnetism; and then--convulsively aged into an old man, as always happens before he feeds--kills himself. The Tyrants of Kool-Sim (1896)--a sequel to The White Kaid of the Atlas (1895), which is not fantastic--is a Lost-World tale featuring dwarfs with poisonous blood, the inevitable result of interbreeding between pygmies and ancient Hebrews, and brave British lads who prevail; An African Treasure (1899) features a Lost World in Morocco inhabited by lost Romans. Tinted Vapours: A Nemesis (1885) is sensational rather than fantastic; The Last Alive (1902), whose title is suggestive, is in fact about a tontine.