H G Wells

The Purple Pileus Illustrated H G Wells

The Lure of the Mask is a 1908 novel by Harold MacGrath that was the fourth-best selling book in the United States for that year. In 1906-07, MacGrath made visits to Italy, and his impressions from those trips inspired the novel. A 1908 review of the book summarizes the light plot of the story in overenthusiastic fashion: The story opens with a jump--literally. A young New Yorker, rich, of course, hears from his window on a night of fog and mist a woman's voice singing divinely