1814-1873 [Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu; J. S. Le Fanu; infreq. var. LeFanu]; b. 28 Aug. [var. 26th], Dominick St., Dublin, son of Thomas Le Fanu, a Church of Ireland clergyman and grand-nephew of R. B. Sheridan on his mother’s side; cousin of Lord Dufferin with whom he correspondedl related to Ruthyns, and Aylmers; spent childhood in Royal Hibernian Military School, Phoenix Park, where his father was chaplain, 1815; moved to Abingdon, Co. Limerick (nr. Murroe), March 1826, on his father’s becoming Dean of Emly, 1826; his father refused chaplaincy in Phoenix Park on account of adminstration’s support for disestablishment, 1836; ed. at home, and TCD (Classics); contributed to Dublin University Magazine from 1837 (“Paudrig Crohoore”, and “Shamus O’Brien”); published “The Ghost and the Bone-setter” (Jan. 1838), being the first part of twelve prose contributions later gathered with another from 1850 as The Purcell Papers in respect of their Catholic-priest narrator of the preceeding century; presents his national ballad “Seamus O’Brien” at meeting of refounded Hist., April. 1839; bar, 1839; ed. Dublin Evening Mail, 1839; striken by death of sis. Catherine, 25 March 1841; contrib. contrib. “Spalatro” to Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 21 (Mar 1843), under editorship of Lever (March-April 1843); prop.-ed. Dublin University Magazine, 1861-69, re-establishing Irish subject matter at the centre of the magazine’s concerns; m. Susanna [var. Susan] Bennett (dg. George Bennett, a lawyer and conservative), 1844, who suffered increasingly from religious scruples and depression; prop. of papers incl. The Warder, The Protestant Guardian, The Statesman, The Dublin Evening Packet, and Evening Mail, a daily, and The Warder, a monthly; author of ghosts stories and novels, publishing in London journals such as All the Year Round as well as in Dublin; The Cock and the Anchor (1845; reiss. as Morley Court, 1873); became reclusive in his (formerly George Bennett’s) house at 18 [now 70] Merrion Square after his wife’s death in April 1858, and wrote his longer novels; much influence be Swedenborg, especially his system of correspondences and his vision of hell; Shamus O’Brien (1850), his ballad on the theme of the about United Irishmens’ Rebellion, became a favourite recitation piece of Samuel Lover at his his ‘Irish Evenings’ in Britain and America; The House by the Churchyard (1863), the first to be successful and the first to evince interest in specifically Anglo-Irish idiolect; Wylder’s Hand (1864), Uncle Silas (1864), narrated by Maud Ruthyn, ward of the title-character and called ‘a bride of death’; Guy Deverell (1865), at first serialised anonymously; All in the Dark (1866), The Tenants of Malory (1867), A Lost Name (1868), and Haunted Lives (1868); unable to pay £900 owing on lease of 18 Merrion Square owing to his brother-in-law Bennett, and obliged to mortgage the leasehold interest back to Bennett, 1868; ed. Dublin University Magazine, 1869-72; The Wyvern Mystery (1869), Checkmate (1870), The Rose and the Key (1871), and Willing to Die (1873); Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851), followed by Chronicles of Golden Friars (1871) and In a Glass Darkly, 3 vols. (1872), the last-named containing ‘Green Tea’, in which the Rev. Jennings is afflicted with a persecuting monkey invisible to others in consequence of imbibing the tea first publ. in Dickens’ All the Year Round (Oct.-Nov. 1869); ‘The Familiar’ (formerly “The Watcher” in Ghost Stories, 1851), in which Captain Barton is persecuted by a supernatural being engendered ultimately by his repressed guilt for a fatal sexual attachment to the dg. of a member of his ship’s crew; and “Mr. Justice Harbottle” (1872), an atheistical sensualist who is guilty of adultery and ends hanging in his own house after hellish creatures start appearing in it (all in Vol. 1); “The Room at the Dragon Volant”, dealing with Richard Beckett’s romantic quest for the beautiful but sinister Countess de St. Alyre and his use of the drug ‘mortis imago’ (Vol. 2); and “Carmilla” (Vol. 3), a vampire tale with strongly lesbian overtones, set in Styria, in which the English girl Laura is threatened with slow extinction by the attentions of the title character, a manifestation of Mircalla, and ancient vampire noble-woman of the Karnstein matrilineal family - providing the basic materials for Stoker’s Dracula; in later years, Le Fanu was known in Dublin as ‘the Invisible Prince’ due to his increasingly reclusiveness; suffered dreams of a house collapsing, his doctor reputedly musing at his death, ‘at last the house has fallen’; d. 7 Feb., at home; posthumous publications incl. The Purcell Papers (1880), thirteen stories gathered from Dublin University Magazine; Poems, ed. A. P. Graves (1896); a memoir of family life was written by his brother, William Richard Le Fanu (Seventy Years of Irish Life, 1893); the Collected Works have been edited by Devendra Varma (52 vols., 1976); there is a portrait by his son, Brindsley Sheridan [Le Fanu], and dated 1916, in the National Gallery of Ireland; ‘revival of interest in Le Fanu dates from the publication of Madam Crowl’s Ghost (1923), ed. M. R. James; now recognised as the equal of Wilkie Collins occupying a place all of his own in the field of sinister and supernatural fiction. NCBE DNB JMC DBIV MKA DIW DIB DIB DIH RAF OCEL SUTH FDA OCIL.
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Works
(Chronology), "Green Tea" first published in All Year Round, New Series Vol 2 [four weekly parts], 23rd October-13 November 1869; "The Familiar" first publ. as "The Watcher", in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 30, in 1847, pp.526 - 45; rep. as "The Watcher" in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851); republ. as "The Familiar" in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1872); "Mr Justice Harbottle", first published as "The Hunted House at Westminster", in Belgravia, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1872), pp.261-85, rev. in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1872 Edn.), a first version having appeared as "An Account of some Strange Disturbances at Aungier Street", in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 42 (December 1853), pp.721-31; "Room at the Dragon Volant", first publ. in London Society, Vol 21 [five monthly parts] February-June 1872; "Carmilla", first publ. in Dark Blue, Vols. 2 & 3, December 1871-March 1872. [See Gary W. Crawford, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport: Greenwood Press 1995.]
The Cock and Anchor; being a chronicle of Old Dublin (Dublin: W. Curry, Jun. & Co. 1845), 3 vols. [347pp; 327pp.p; 346pp.]; Do., intro. Herbert van Thal [First Novel Library] (London: Cassell 1967); Fortunes of Turlogh O’Brien, A Tale of the Wars of King James (Dublin: James McGlashan 1847), 342pp., ill. Hablot K. Browne; Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (Dublin: J McGlashan 1851), ill. Phiz, 304pp.; The House by the Churchyard, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1863); Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram Haugh, 3 vols. (Lon;R. Bentley 1864) [xi, 325pp. iv, 315pp.; iv, 324pp.]; Wylder’s Hand, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1864), and Do., another edn. Wylder’s Hand (NY: Carleton 1865); The Prelude; Being a Contribution Towards a History of the Election for the University [of Dublin] by John Figwood [pseud.] (Dublin: Herbert 1865), pamphlet; Guy Deverell, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1865); All in the Dark, 2 vols. (Dublin: Bentley 1866); The Tenants of Malory, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1867); The Poem of Shamus O’Brien (Manchester: Heywood 1867); Haunted Lives, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1868); A Lost Name, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1868) [iv, 314pp.; iv, 309pp.; iv, 299pp.); The Wyvern Mystery, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1869) [viii, 275pp.; vi, 264pp.; vi, 277pp.]; Checkmate, 3 vols. (London: Hurst & Blackett 1871); Chronicles of Golden Friars, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1871) [viii, 303pp.; 328pp.; 298pp.; The Rose and the Key, 3 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall 1871); In a Glass Darkly, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1872),Vol. I: ‘Green Tea’, ‘The Familiar’, ‘Mr. Justice Harbottle’; Vol. 2: ‘The Room at the Dragon Volant’; Vol. 3: ‘Carmilla’; ; Morley Court being &c. [rep. of Cock and Anchor] (London: Chapman & Hall 1873); Willing to Die, 3 vols. (London: Hurst & Blackett 1873);
Posthumous, The Bird of Passage (NY: Appleton 1878); The Purcell Papers, by the late Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ... with a memoir by Alfred Perceval Graves [ed.], 3 vols., (London: Bentley 1880) [xxxi, 236pp.; 273pp.; 289pp.], rep. (Sank City, Wisc: Arkham House 1975); The Evil Guest (London: Ward & Downey [1894]); The Watcher and Other Wierd Stories (London: Downey & Co. 1896) [var. 1894]; Shamus O’Brien, Comic Opera, founded on a Poem by Le Fanu, Book by G. H. Jessop (London: Boosey 1896); Phaudrig Crohoore, with music by Charles Villiers Stanford [1st sep. edn. ‘recently issued’] (London: Boosey 1896), ii, 3-43pp.; M. R. James, ed., Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery (London: G. Bell 1923 [var. 1925]), Do., rep. 1994); Perceval Graves, ed., with memoir, The Poems [1st edn.] (London: Downey & Co. 1896), xxviii, 164pp.; Madame Crowl’s Ghost (London: Bell 1923); The Collected Works, 52 vols, ed. Sri Devendra P. Varma (NY: Arno Press 1976).
Reprint Editions, M. R. James, ed., Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery (London: G. Bell 1923 [var. 1925]), Do., rep. 1994) [incl. "The Magician Earl", based on "The Enchantment of Geroidh Iarla" by Patrick Kennedy]; E. F. Bleiler, ed. and intro., The Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu (NY: Dover 1964); E. F. Bleiler, ed., Ghost Stories and Mysteries (NY: Dover 1975); Robert Tracy, ed., In a Glass Darkly (OUP 1993), 347pp.; Elizabeth Bowen, intro., The House by the Churchyard (London: A. Blond 1968); Thomas Kilroy, intro., The House by the Churchyard [Classic Irish Novels] (Belfast Appletree 1993), 419pp.; In a Glass Darkly [Gill’s Irish Classics] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), 332pp.; Robert Tracy, ed., In a Glass Darkly (OUP: World Classics 1993), 352pp.; Do., W. J. McCormack, ed., In a Glass Darkly [Gill’s Irish Classics] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), 314pp.; Thomas Kilroy, ed., The House by the Churchyard (Belfast Appletree 1993), 419pp. QRY, rep. edn. of Cock and Anchor ... Old Dublin [1845] (q. details), pbk. 358pp.
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Maurice Richardson, Novels of Mystery from the Victorian Age (London: Pilot Press 1945).
A. Nethercot, ‘Christabel and Le Fanu’s "Carmilla"’, in Modern Philology (Aug. 1949); p.32-38.
Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Impressions (London: Longmans 1950) [rep. intro. to Uncle Silas].
Walter Allen, The English Novel (London: Phoenix 1954).
V. S. Pritchett, The Living Novel (London; Chatto & Windus 1966).
Julia Briggs, Night Visitors: The rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (London: Faber 1977).
Peter Penzoldt, ‘Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’, in The Supernatural in Fiction (NY: Humanities Press 1965).
Brendan Hennessy, The Gothic Novel (London: Longmans 1978).
James B. Twitchell, The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Duke UP 1981).
Harold Orel, The Victorian Short Story (Cambridge UP 1986).
Neil Cornwell, The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1990).
Lyn Pykett, The Sensationsl Novel: From ‘The Woman in White’ to ‘The Moonstone’ (Plymouth: Northcote Hse. 1991).
Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Impressions (London: Longman 1950), pp. 3-4.
Nelson Browne, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (London: Arthur Barker 1951).
W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford 1980; rep. edn. Dublin: Lilliput 1991; rev. edn. Lilliput 1996).
J. W. McCormack, Introduction to In A Glass Darkly (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), pp.vii-xvii.
W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland [rev. edn.] (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1991).
W. J. McCormack, Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen (Manchester UP 1993).
James Cahalan, Great Hatred, Little Room, The Irish Historical Novel (Syracuse UP/Gill & Macmillan 1983).
Jean Lozes, ‘Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: The Prince of the Invisible’, in Patrick Rafroidi & Terence Brown, eds., The Irish Short Story (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1979), pp.98-99.
Thomas Loe, paper in That Other World: The Supernatural and the Fantastic in Irish Literature: Transactions of the Princess Grace Irish Library Conference, 1998.)
Luke Gibbons, ‘“Some Hysterical Hatred”: History, Hysteria and the Literary Revival’, in Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 1997), pp.7-23; p.18, quoting Gothic novelist Sheridan Le Fanu: “Mystery is the shadow of guilt” [no source given].
Joseph Spence, ‘“The Great Angelic Sin”: The Faust Legend in Irish Literature, 1820-1900’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 2 (Autumn 1994), pp.47-58.
Robert Tracy, reviewing new editions of J. S. Le Fanu, The Cock and Anchor, 3 vols; The House by the Churchyard and The Purcell Papers along with William Allingham, Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 38 No. 3 (Dec. 1983), pp.354-57.
Kevin Sullivan, reviews W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (OUP 1980, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 36 No. 2 (Sept. 1981), pp.244-46.
See also remarks on The House by the Church-yard considered as a source for Finnegans Wake, in Grace Eckley, Children’s Lore in Finnegans Wake (Syracuse UP 1985), under James Joyce [infra].
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Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives extracts and selections of "The Quare Gander"; "A Wandering Minstrel" (from House by the Churchyard); also "Shamus O’Brien", with a note referring to the account in W. R. Le Fanu’s Seventy Years: ‘[It] was written in a very few days in the year 1840 […].The scraps of paper on which it was written were lost, and years after, when my brother wished for a copy, I had to write it out from memory for him’ [… &c., as infra]; "Phaudrig Crohoore" [conceived as an ‘Irish Lochinvar’, it appeared in Dublin University Magazine, with a preface stating it to be composed by an illiterate minstrel Michael Finley; attended by an anecdote from W. R. Le Fanu relating to the disclosure of its author’s real identity by him at the Viceregal Lodge in the days of Lord and Lady Spencer]; "Abhrain an Bhuideil" [addressed to a whiskey bottle and ending, ‘Then, beautiful witch, / I’ll be found - in a ditch / With your kiss on my cold lips, and never rise more’]. The Editor writes: ‘Mr Le Fanu, who had retired from social life several years previously, died in his house in Merrion Sq., Feb. 7 1873. / Mr Alfred Perceval Graves edited his poems in a collected edition of 1896, and in his preface he says, those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu’s friendship, and only they, can form any idea of the true character of the man; for after the death of his wife, to whom he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsook general society, in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, and charm of conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal of an Irish wit and a scholar of the old school. / From this society he vanished so entirely that Dublin, always ready with a nickname, dubbed him the Invisible Prince; and, indeed, he was for long almost invisible, except to his family and familiar freinds, unless at odd hours of the evening, when he might occasionally be seems stealing, like the ghost of his former self, between his newspaper office and his home in Merrion Square. sometimes too he was to be encountered in an old, out-of-th-way bookshop, poring over some rare black-letter Astrology or Demonology’ [End].
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), lists The Cock and Anchor, being a Chronicle of Old Dublin City (Dublin: Curry 1845), rpt. with changes as Morley Court being &c. (London 1873); Uncle Silas, A Tale of Bartram Haugh (Bentley 1864). Bibl., W. J. McCormack, ‘Uncle Silas’, in Long Room, no. 4. (1971), and ‘Swedenbourgianism as ‘Structure in ... Uncle Silas’, in Long Room, no. 6 (1972). Also Willing to Die (1873); The Watcher and Other Wierd Stories (London: Downey & Co. 1894)[?]; Madam Crowl’s Ghost ... (London: Bell 1923); The Prelude, Being a Contribution Towards the History of the Election for the University, by John Figwood, pseud., (Dublin 1865); and The Beautiful Poem of Shamus O’Brien (Manchester 1867). Stewart M. Ellis, in Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others (NY 1931), contains a bibliography extended from the list in Irish Book Lover 8, (1916), 30-33. Cf. RAF, infra.
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists The Cock and Anchor (Duffy 1845; Downey & Co. 1909); The Fortunes of Col. Turlogh O’Brien (anon., 1847, Downey & Co. 1895) [recte McGlashan 1847]; The House by the Churchyard (Duffy [1863]); The Purcell Papers; A Chronicle of Golden Friars and Other Stories (London: Downey & Co. 1896). The plot of Turlogh, efforts of an officer in Jacobite army to regain estates in Tipperary held by Sir Hugh Willoughby whose daughter [Grace] he loves; descriptions of Jacobite parliament in Dublin and Battle of Aughrim. ‘Among the 3 or 4 best Irish historical novels’ [Cleeve’s ‘some critics’]. Bibl, The Cock and Anchor, rep. Garland, 1979.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, Vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross 1980) [Printed Titles as supra]; Rafroidi lists Dublin University Magazine contributions, each rep. in Purcell Papers (1880), ‘The Ghost and the Bone-Setter’ (Jan 1838; XI, 61, p.50),; ‘The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardogh’ (Mar. 1838; XI, 63, p.313), later ‘The Haunted Baronet’, in Belgravia 1870, and in Chronicles of Golden Friars, London: Bentley 1871, vols. 1-2 of 3 vols.; ‘The Last Heir of Castle Connor’ (June 1838; XI, 66, p.713); ‘The Drunkard’s Dream’ (Aug. 1838; XII, 68, p.151); ‘Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess’ (Nov. 1838; XII, 71, p.502), rev. rep. as The Murdered Cousin in Ghost Stories [&c.] (1851), further enlarged as ‘Maud Ruthyn, Dublin University Magazine, 1864, then as Uncle Silas (1864); ‘The Bridal of Carriguarah’ (April 1839; XIII, 76, p.405); ‘Schalken the Painter’ (May 1839; XIII, 74, p.579), rep. in Ghost Stories (1851); ‘Scraps of Hibernian Ballads’ (June 1839; XIII, 78, p.752); ‘Jim Sulivan’s Adventures in the Great Snow’; July 1839; XIV, 79, p.103); ‘A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family’ (Oct. 1839; XIV, 82, p.398), enl. as The Wyvern Mystery; ‘An Adventure of Hardress Fitzgerald, a Royalist Captain (Feb. 1840; XV, 86, p.145); ‘The Quare Gander’ (Oct. 1840; XVI, 94, p.390); ‘Miscellanea Mystica’ (Jan., Feb., & June 1846; XXVII, 157, [n.p.]; 158, p.155; 162, p.691) [attribution made by M. Sadleir]; ‘The Watcher, from reminiscences of a bachelor’ (Nov. 1847; XXX, 179, p.526), rep. in Ghost Stories (1851); ‘Fireside Horrors for Christmas’ (Dec. 1847; XXX, 180, p.631) [attribution made by Rafroidi]; ‘The Fatal Bride; two contributions from reminiscences of a bachelor’ (Jan. 1848; XXXI, 181, p.15); ‘Evenings with the Witchfinders’ (passim 1848, a series; also attrib. Rafroidi); ‘Some Account of the Latter Days of the Hon. Richard Marston of Dunoran’ (April, June 1848 [no issue details]), later as ‘The Evil Guest’ in Ghost Stories (1851), then as A Lost Name (1868); ‘The State Prosecutions’, editorial (June 1848; XXXI, 186, p.785); ‘The Irish League’, editorial (July 1848; XXXIII, 187, p.115); ‘The Mysterious Lodger’ (Jan., Feb 1850) [no issue details] (‘Billy Malowney’s Taste of Love and Glory’ (June 1850; XXXV, 210, p.692); ‘Shamus O’Brien, A Ballad (July 1850; XXXVI, 211, p.109). SEE ALSO Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English Vol. I (1980), Le Fanu constantly recycled, rewrote, and retitled his stories for various magazines and collections. ‘Some Account of the Latter Days of the Hon. Richard Marston of Dunoran’ first appeared in Dublin University Magazine (April-June 1848), but was reissued as ‘The Evil Guest’ in Ghost Stories (1851), and finally distributed in three volumes of A Lost Name (Bentley 1863); numerous Dublin University Magazine-published stories appeared in other Le Fanu collections published by Bentley, such as Chronicle of Golden Friars (1871) and In A Glass Darkly (1872), and in and in The Purcell Papers (1880, rep. Wisconsin 1975). His Dublin University Magazine works include ‘Shamus O’Brien,’ a ballad (July 1850), reprinted as The Poem of Shamus O’Brien (Manchester 1867), and famous in the US where Samuel Lover recited it, and also rendered as an opera by Charles Villiers Stanford, [OCEL q.v.].
Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers [rev. 1 vol. edn.] (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), incls. an incomplete and ill-informed article citing Turlogh O’Brien (1847) as ‘one of the best of Irish historical novels’ according to ‘some critics’; 16 subsequent novels incl. The House by the Churchyard (1863); Uncle Silas (1864); In a Glass Darkly [recte stories]; Le Fanu contrib. The Purcell Papers to Dublin University Magazine while still a student, and later issued them in volume form (1880); also notices Peter Le Fanu, Smock Alley Secrets (1778).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1 selects Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, 1231; see also remarks at 1078, 1107, 1136, 1176, & BIOG/COMM, Jean Lozes, ed., ‘Fragment d’un journal intimes de J. S. Le Fanu ... 18 Mai à1858’, [in] Caliban new ser., Vol. 10, no. 1 (1974), pp.153-64; William Le Fanu, Seventy Years of Irish Life (London: Arnold 1893); T. P. Le Fanu, Memoir of the Le Fanu Family (Manchester, priv. 1924); Elizabeth Bowen, ‘Uncle Silas’ (1946), rep. in Collected Impressions (London: Longman 1950); Nelson Brown[e], Sheridan Le Fanu: A Short Survey of His Life and Works (London 1951); Ken Scott, ‘Le Fanu’s "The Room in the Dragon Volant"‘ in Lock Haven Review, No. 10 (1968), pp.25-32; Kevin Sullivan, ‘The House by the Churchyard, James Joyce and Sheridan Le Fanu’, in R. J. Porter and J. D. Brophy, eds. Modern Irish Literature (Syracuse UP 1972), pp.315-34; Kevin Sullivan, ‘Sheridan Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers 1838-40’, in Irish Univ. Review, Vol. 2 no. 1 (1972), pp.5-19; W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford 1980) [1298-99]. FDA2 selects The House by the Church-yard [883-89], and remarks at 832-54 [WJ McCormack, ed.]; 930, 939, 990. ALSO FDA3, 384, 562, 655n. NOTE ALSO that William Richard Le Fanu (1816-1894), Seventy years of Irish Life is selected in FDA3, 387-91, with BIOG 557, family experienced hardships during Tithe War; ed. TCD, engineer; moved to Rathporeen House, Co. Cork, 1859, and met Anthony Trollope.
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), lists Carmilla, ‘generally considered the finest vampire story of the century’; set in Styria; the vampire is Mircilla, Countess Karnstein, dead a century and a half. Exorcised by stake, by baron Vordenburg; psychological tale with explicit lesbian overtones; published with Green Tea, The Familiar, and Mr Justice Harbottle, ghost stories. In Green Tea, an epistolary tale of Dr. Hesselius, the ‘metaphysical investigator,’ a hyper-sensitive, Rev. Jennings, is afflicted with visions of an obscene monkey by drinking the tea. Passed his last years in virtually complete isolation, dying in Dublin at a relatively young age from bronchitis. BL 21.
Charles Baldrick, ed., The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (OUP 1992), incls. ‘A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family’ [1839], here pp.102-32.
Belfast Central Public Library, All in the Dark (n.d.); A Chronicle of Golden Friars (1896); The Evil Guest (n.d.); Fortunes of Torlogh O’Brien (n.d.); In A Glass Darkly (1923); Poems (1896); The Rose and the Key (n.d.); The Purcell Papers (3v. 1880); The Tenants of Mallory (n.d.); Uncle Silas (1899); Willing to Die (n.d.); Wylder’s Hand (1876). NOTE Wylder’s Hand (repr. 1963). Also A. P. Graves, Memoir (1880).
Eric Stevens Books (1992 Cat.) lists The Poems of Jos. Sheridan Le Fanu, ed. Alfred Percival Graves (Downey & Co. 1896) [1st ed.], scarce , Eric Stevens Cat. 166 £95; also J Sheridan LeFanu, Willing to Die, a Novel (Chapman & Hall 1878; first ed. 3 vols. 1873) [1st 1 vol. ed.?], 412pp. [£25].
Hyland Books (Cat. 220; Jan. 1996) lists M. R. James, ed., Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery (1925).
Variations: On editorship of the Dublin University Magazine, the following variations are found: 1861-69 [OCIL]; 1869-72 [DNB]; ‘joined staff’ 1837, ed. 1861-69 or 1872 [RAF]; 1869-1871 [DIB], and 1869-72 [DIH].
W. R. Le Fanu’s Seventy Years of Irish Life (London: Arnold 1894), gives several of his pieces for Dublin University Magazine in full, including “Shamus O’Brien” and “Phaudrig Crohoore”, together with explanations of their origins, the former being based on a song sung by Paddy O’Neill, a fiddle and violin-playing musician who entertained the fares on the Limerick-Kilrush ferry [named] Garry Owen with his witty and sentimental tooralees. “Shamus O’Brien”, a veteran of 1798, is captured and sentenced to hanging after a patriotic dock-speech; but, on the gallows, his bonds are cut by the Catholic priest and he escapes to the Glen of Aherlow. The piece, in rhyming couplets, was printed with an elaborate pseudonymic disclaimer, attributing it to an illiterate Irishman. Samuel Lover received a copy of it from W. R. Le Fanu and included it in his successful American Irish Evenings, and thenceforth it was often attributed to him. Lover’s letter is reproduced in Le Fanu’s book. Note that Roy Foster (Paddy and Mr Punch, 1993, p.68), writes that W. R. Le Fanu he sees the Golden Age of Ireland peasant-landlord relations as falling the ‘before the Tithe War’ - i.e.,. before 1831.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald: Le Fanu wrote verses on the death of Lord Edward in Hiberno-English, published as “Scraps of Hibernian Ballads” in Dublin University Magazine, XIII, 78 (June 1839), p.754. See Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, Vol 1, 1980; also Fitzgerald, supra.
Interpolated: Chap. XII of The House by the Churchyard is an interpolated ghost story [OXCO].
James Joyce: There are extensive allusions to Le Fanu’s House by the Churchyard in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, entailing mention of Sturk, the occupant of the house in Chapelizod who is attacked at Butcherswood in the Phoenix Park and resurrected by Black Dillon. Other characters from the novel mentioned in the Wake include Devereux, Irons, et al. (See Adaline Glasheen, Third Census to Finnegans Wake, 1977.)
Screen vampires: Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer filmed Le Fanu’s version of the vampire myth as Vampyr in 1931-32, resulting in an acknowledged masterpiece; Hamme films poduced The Vampire Lovers, based on Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with Ingrid Pitt embroiled in fairly explicit scenes of lesbian seductio which attracted large Dublin audiences.
Portrait of J. S. Le Fanu by unknown miniature (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, [Catalogue] (Ulster Museum 1965).
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)