A curious, unusual, puzzling type of book. The story of the awakening of a London financier who, after long years spent in the amassing of a fortune, reverts to his early dream of becoming a great philanthropist. Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre.

He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that "his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century."