Story summary
Resumo de Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações
- 8 min de leitura
- 10 parts
- Áudio em breve
Dyson picks a gold coin from a London drain, and strangers with strange stories start to find him.
3 months free · unlimited eBooks, audiobooks and summaries, and print and large print at cost
Nothing to pay today · Enviaremos um e-mail antes da cobrança. · Cancele online com dois cliques
Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações em resumo
Resumo: 8 min de leitura
- Tempo de leitura
- Cerca de 3 h 45 min3 h fast, 4 h 30 min slow
- Duração
- 53.800 palavras
- Nível na biblioteca
- Médio longer sentences, everyday words
- Primeira publicação
- 1895by Arthur Machen
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Quanto tempo leva para ler os clássicos · Atualizado
Grátis por 3 meses
Acesse o resumo completo de Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações, grátis
- 200.000+ clássicos em eBooks, audiolivros e resumos de 15 minutos, e impressos, também em letra grande, pelo custo de impressão
- Até 5 leitores na sua casa em um só plano
Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações in short
The Three Impostors is the story of one gold coin and a ring of tales that gather around it. Dyson picks up the coin by accident, and strangers begin to find him. Their stories of horror or deceit are persuasive enough to win belief, or at least partial belief.
What Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações is about
A man shoots out of a dark London passage and flings away something that flashes like fire. A young writer named Dyson runs after it and lifts a gold coin from the bars of a drain.
The Three Impostors, also called The Transmutations, is a novel by Arthur Machen, published in 1895. A thin frame of London street adventures holds strange tales, each told by someone Dyson or his friend Phillipps meets by chance.
Para quem é. This is for readers who love gaslit London, tales within tales, and the shiver of the weird story, told in prose full of fog and strange detail.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A gold coin in a gutter starts everything
On a June evening in Red Lion Square, Phillipps, a student of science, insists that real life holds no marvels. His friend Dyson, a man of letters who loves the marvellous, says something strange has just happened to him.
Near Tottenham Court Road, a man shot from a passage and flung something away. Dyson saw a streak like flame roll toward a drain, and he rescued it from the bars. Then a second man ran past with a knife and murder in his eyes. Under the lamp, the object proves to be a gold coin stamped with the name of Tiberius Caesar Augustus.
Phillipps knows the legend of this coin. It is said to be the one piece of a Roman issue that escaped the melting pot.
A small odd object, picked up by someone willing to look, can open onto a much larger darkness.
- 2Comece grátis para ler
A stranger's panic leads to a tale of lynching
Dyson strolls down Oxford Street, watching people.
- 3Comece grátis para ler
A girl on a bench loses her brother
Phillipps calls himself a materialist, yet he is one of the most credulous of men.
- 4Comece grátis para ler
A hungry governess meets a professor with a secret
Miss Lally's tale begins with her father's early death and her mother's long illness.
- 5Comece grátis para ler
A simple boy and a bust out of reach
The professor announces that the house needs a boy for odd jobs.
- 6Comece grátis para ler
A clever dealer, a gem and a deadly statue
Dyson sits in a Strand pub, grumbling aloud about the frightened man and the spectacled youth.
- 7Comece grátis para ler
A veiled lodger and a deadly white powder
Dyson visits his gloomy friend Russell in Notting Hill.
- 8Comece grátis para ler
A lost notebook and a young man's confession
Late one Saturday, Dyson drifts into a gloomy district near Clerkenwell and sits in a pub's private bar.
- 9Comece grátis para ler
Science and wonder are rivals and secret allies
Phillipps and Dyson stand for two ways of looking at the world.
- 10Comece grátis para ler
Stories inside stories and a city made strange
The novel is told in layers.
Read all 10 key ideas now
3 months free, then USD 0,14 a day: unlimited eBooks, audiobooks and summaries, and print and large print at cost.
- Nothing to pay today
- Enviaremos um e-mail antes da cobrança.
- Cancele online com dois cliques
Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Dyson A pompous, curious man of letters who loves the marvellous and chases mystery through London's streets, starting with a coin he finds in a drain.
- Phillipps A sceptical amateur scientist and ethnologist who trusts any wonder that wears scientific language, and who listens to the strangers Dyson draws in.
- Henry Wilkins A nervous, well-dressed man who leaps across Oxford Street in a panic and tells Dyson a terrible tale of Blue-Rock Park.
- Miss Lally A young governess with hazel eyes who sits weeping in Leicester Square and tells of her lost brother and Professor Gregg.
- Professor Gregg A kind ethnologist who hunts a hidden race behind the old fairy tales, guided by a black seal covered in strange marks.
- Mr Burton A smooth, talkative dealer in curiosities who spins tales of rare gems and a deadly bronze statue, and who is eager to meet Robbins.
- Miss Leicester A veiled lodger in Notting Hill who tells Dyson of her brother Francis and a white powder, and who says she is hiding from a watcher.
- Joseph Walters A young scholar with spectacles who falls under Dr Lipsius's spell, fears for his life, and writes down his history in a green notebook.
How it ends (spoiler)
Dyson and Phillipps wander into an abandoned house at sunset and sit in two old chairs in a ruined room. A groan and a stench of burning draw them upstairs. In a bare room they find a naked man staked to the floor, tortured with hot irons and dead. Dyson names him as the young man with spectacles. The prologue has already shown three people leaving the house, grim and cheerful, carrying a dripping parcel for their absent doctor's museum. They were the impostors all along.
The whole book is coming to your plan
The full text of Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações opens soon. Keep this summary as a file today.
Paperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way. Email me when it is printed
Dúvidas sobre Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações
What is The Three Impostors about?
It follows two London friends, Dyson and Phillipps, who meet strangers with eerie stories. A gold Roman coin links the tales, which range from mountain lynch mobs to a hidden ancient race and a witch's powder.
What does the title The Transmutations mean?
Transmutation means changing one substance into another. The word points to alchemy, to the turning of ordinary life into art through style, and to the bodily changes that several characters in the tales undergo.
When was The Three Impostors written and is it a true story?
Arthur Machen published it in 1895. It is fiction, though it draws on real London streets, old folklore, Roman history and the scientific and spiritual debates of its time.
Is The Three Impostors easy to follow?
Yes, once you see the pattern. A simple frame of walks and chance meetings opens onto self-contained stories, each with its own title, so the book can be taken one tale at a time.
Cite esta edição
Machen, Arthur. The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-three-impostors-or-the-transmutations.
Machen, A. (2026). The three impostors; or, the transmutations. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-three-impostors-or-the-transmutations (Original work published 1895)
Machen, Arthur. The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-three-impostors-or-the-transmutations.
@book{machen2026three,
author = {Machen, Arthur},
title = {The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-three-impostors-or-the-transmutations},
note = {First published 1895}
}
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice
The Iliad
Romeo and Juliet
The Picture of Dorian GrayGrátis por 3 meses
Acesse o resumo completo de Os Três Impostores; ou, As Transmutações, grátis
- 200.000+ clássicos em eBooks, audiolivros e resumos de 15 minutos, e impressos, também em letra grande, pelo custo de impressão
- Até 5 leitores na sua casa em um só plano
