Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

January 1516, a stormy night in the Black Forest: an aged shepherd, alone and near death, accepts a stranger's offer of youth, beauty and wealth. The stranger is Faust, and the price is eighteen months in his company and a curse that turns Fernand Wagner into a wolf once a month. The story that follows runs through Florence, a Mediterranean island and the fleet of an Ottoman grand vizier. Reynolds outsold Dickens in the penny numbers, and this is the most extravagant of his serials. Thirty-nine plates, from Michele da Verona to Edvard Munch, trace the forest, the siege and the bargain that drive this tale of a wolf by night.