J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)

WorksReferencesNotes

Life
[Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu; J. S. Le Fanu; infreq. var. LeFanu]; b. 28 Aug. [var. 26th], Dominick St., Dublin, grandson of Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu, R. B. Sheridan thereby being his great-uncle on the maternal side; son of Thomas Le Fanu, a Church of Ireland clergyman who was curate to his mat. gf. William Dobbin, rector of St. Mary’s, Dublin, and who later became chaplain of Royal Hibernian Military School, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 1815, and finally rector of Abington, Co. Limerick as well as Dean of Emly, both in 1826; moved to Williamstown Rd. [Booterstown], Co. Dublin, during Tithe War disturbances in Limerick, 1833; Le Fanu Snr. was refused the chaplaincy in the [Viceregal Lodge] on account of his views contrary to the government’s support for the proposed Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, 1836; J. S. Le Fanu spent his childhood at the Phoenix Park and in Abingdon; he was educated at home, extensively employing his father’s library as an auto-didact, and afterwards read Classics at TCD; Le Fanu Snr. borrowed £100 to visit his dying sister in Bath from a cousin, Capt. Dobbins and left his widow to the care of his son at his own death; Joseph entered Kings’ Inns and took his bar exams, 1839, but barely practiced as a barrister;
 
he contributed to Dublin University Magazine from 1837 (“Paudrig Crohoore” [var. Crohore], 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; acquired The Warder (monthly), in 1838; presented his national ballad “Seamus [Shamus] O’Brien” at meeting of refounded TCD Historical Society [the Hist.], April 1839; by 1840 Le Fanu had acquired a half-share in The Dublin Evening Packet and Evening Mail - all three papers being then amalgamated with The Warder as a weekly reprint; later acquired Protestant Guardian, and Statesman; pub. ghosts stories and novels in London journals such as All the Year Round as well as in Dublin; he was much affected by the death of his sis. Catherine, 25 March 1841; contrib. “Spalatro” to Dublin University Magazine then under editorship of Lever (Vol. 21, March-April 1843); m. Susanna Bennett, dg. of George Bennett, a Tory lawyer, 18 Dec. 1844, Isaac Butt acting as witness to the marriage; settled at Warrington Place; children Eleanor (b.1845), Emma (b.1846), Thomas (b.1847), and George (b.1854); issued The Cock and Anchor (1845), a historical novel set in 18th-century Dublin;
 
joined Mitchel, Meagher, Butt and others in opposing government policy in the Famine, 1847; issued The Fortunes of Colonel Turlogh O‘Brien (1847), set in the Williamite War; sought and lost the nomination as Tory MP for Co. Carlow, 1852; also serialised novels by women writers incl. his neice Rhonda Broughton; with whom four children; rented house at 18 Merrion Sq. [now No. 70] being his wife’s former home on her parents removal to England, 1856; his wife, who suffered increasingly from religious scruples and depression, d. April 1858, following so-called hysterical attack; Susanna bur. Mount St. Jerome Cemetery, Rathfarnham; Le Fanu became reclusive after her death, acquiring monicker of “The Invisible Prince”; came under influence of Swedenborg, especially as regards his system of correspondences and his vision of hell; suffered the death of his mother, 1861; corresponded with his cousin Lady Gifford; became the editor and proprietor of Dublin University Magazine, 1861-69, re-establishing Irish subject-matter at the centre of the magazine’s concerns; embarked on his longer novels after 1861;
 
issued “Shamus O’Brien” (1850), his ballad on the theme of the United Irishmens’ Rebellion, which became a favourite recitation piece of Samuel Lover at his “Irish Evenings” in Britain and America; issued The House by the Churchyard (1863), the first of his writings to be successful and the first to evince an interest in Hiberno-English - in which Chap. XII is an interpolated ghost story and the whole a narrative of a man believed dead who returns to life; signed a contract with his publisher Richard Bentley stipulating that future novels address ‘an English subject and of modern times’; issued Wylder’s Hand (1864), which was, like its successors, set in England; issued Uncle Silas (1864), a psychological thriller set in Derbyshire, and the story of Maud Ruthvyn placed by her deceased father Austin - a reclusive and a Swedenborgian - in the charge of the eponymous uncle who intrigues to deprive her of her fortune and plots her murder when she resists; elaborated from the shorter “A Passage from the Secret History of an Irish Countess” in “The Purcell Papers” (DUM, 1838), narrated by Maud Ruthyn, ward of the title-character and called ‘a bride of death’; issued Guy Deverell (1865), at first serialised anonymously; issued 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 which he owed to his brother-in-law Bennett, and was obliged to mortgage the leasehold interest back to Bennett, 1868;
 
commenced editing Dublin University Magazine, 1869-72; issued The Wyvern Mystery (1869), Checkmate (1870), The Rose and the Key (1871); also 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’s All the Year Round (Oct.-Nov. 1869); also “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 arising from a fatal sexual attachment to the dg. of a member of his ship’s crew; also “Mr. Justice Harbottle” (1872), the narrative of an atheistical sensualist who is guilty of adultery and ends up hanging in his own house after hellish creatures start appearing in it (all in Vol. 1); also “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 finally “Carmilla” (Vol. 3 - orig. in the Dark Blue Magazine (4 parts, 1871-72), 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;
 
Le Fanu was known in Dublin as ‘the Invisible Prince’ due to his increasingly reclusiveness in later years; Le Fanu suffered dreams of a house collapsing, his doctor reputedly musing at his death, ‘at last the house has fallen’; d. 7 Feb. 1873, at his home, 18 Merrion-square South [aetat. 59]; bur. Mount Jerome; posthumous publications incl. the novel Willing to Die (1873), and The Purcell Papers (1880) being thirteen stories gathered from Dublin University Magazine and named in respect of their narrator, a Catholic-priest of the preceeding century; his Poems, were edited by A. P. Graves (1896); a memoir of family life was written by his brother, William Richard Le Fanu (Seventy Years of Irish Life, 1893); obits. appeared in Temple Bar (Aug. 1877) and Dublin University Magazine (?March 1873); the Collected Works were edited by Devendra Varma in 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 his works dates from the publication of Madam Crowl’s Ghost (1923) by M. R. James (ed.); he is now recognised as the equal of Wilkie Collins and occupies a place all of his own in the field of sinister and supernatural fiction; “Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter” (1839) was adapted for BBC TV broadcast at Christmas 1979; an entry on Le Fanu by John Clute in The Encyclopaedia of Horror attributes the form of his best work to ‘Protestant guilt’ - presumably associated with colonial crimes in Ireland. NCBE ODNB JMC DBIV MKA DIW DIB DIB DIH RAF OCEL SUTH FDA OCIL
 
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73)

[ Note: A miniature portrait of J. S. Le Fanu by an unknown hand is cited in Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, [Catalogue] Ulster Museum 1965. ]

[ top ]

Works
[ See list of texts available at Literature Online - infra. ]
Contemporary printings
  • 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 Torlogh O’Brien: A Tale of the Wars of King James (Dublin: James McGlashan 1847), 342pp., ill. by Hablot K. Browne.
  • Ghost Stories [and] Tales of Mystery (Dublin: J. McGlashan; London & Liverpool: William S. Orr & Co. MDCCCLI [1851]), ill. by Phiz, 304pp. [contains “The Watcher”; “The Murdered Cousin”; “Schalken the Painter”; “The Evil Guest”; ills. as 4 lvs. of pls.; 16cm [12°]; a copy held in Cambridge UL’s Register of Preservation Surrogates as being considered v. rare; other copies at Oxford, UC London, and the British Library].
  • The House by the Churchyard, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1863).
  • Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh, 3 vols. (London: R. Bentley 1864) [xi, 325pp. iv, 315pp.; iv, 324pp.].
  • Wylder’s Hand, 3 vols. (London: R. Bentley 1864), and Do. [another edn.] (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) [Vol. I: iv, 314pp.; Vol. II: iv, 309pp.; Vol. III: iv, 299pp.].
  • The Wyvern Mystery, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley 1869) [Vol I: viii, 275pp.; Vol II: vi, 264pp.; Vol III: vi, 277pp.].
  • Checkmate, 3 vols. (London: Hurst & Blackett 1871).
  • Chronicles of Golden Friars, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1871) [Vol I: viii, 303pp.; Vol II: 328pp.; Vol III: 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).
Note: “Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo”, printed serially in the Dublin University Magazine (Vol. 21, March-April 1843) was attributed to Le Fanu by W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford 1980).
[ top ]
Posthumous publications
  • 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.], & Do. [rep. edn.] (Sank City, Wisc: Arkham House 1975) [see details].
  • The Evil Guest (London: Ward & Downey [1894]).
  • The Watcher and Other Wierd Stories (London: Downey & Co. 1896) [var. 1894].
  • Shamus O’Brien, A Comic Opera, founded on a Poem by J. S. Le Fanu; Book [libretto] 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.
  • Perceval Graves, ed., with memoir, The Poems [1st edn.] (London: Downey & Co. 1896), xxviii, 164pp..
  • The Collected Works, 52 vols, ed. Sri Devendra P. Varma (NY: Arno Press 1976) [of which Uncle Silas, rep. of 1864 Bentley Edn., ed. Varma, Arno Press 1977, in 3 vols].
  • Jan Jedrzejewski , ed., The Cock and Anchor, Being a Chronicle of Old Dublin City [1845] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2000), xxviii, 489pp.
Stories [Select Chronology]*
  • “Green Tea” first published in All Year Round [New Ser., Vol. 2] (23rd Oct.-13 Nov. 1869) [in four weekly parts].
  • “The Familiar” first publ. as “The Watcher”, in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 30 (1847), pp.526-45; Do., in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851); and Do., rep. as “The Familiar” in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1872).
  • “An Account of some Strange Disturbances at Aungier Street”, in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 42 (December 1853), pp.721-31; Do., rep. as “The Hunted House at Westminster” in Belgravia, 16, 4 (1872), pp.261-85; and Do. [rev.] as “Mr Justice Harbottle”, in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1872 Edn.).
  • “Room at the Dragon Volant”, first publ. in London Society, Vol 21 [five monthly parts] Feb.-June 1872.
  • “Carmilla”, first publ. in Dark Blue, Vols. 2 & 3 (Dec. 1871-March 1872) [December 1871, pp.434-48; January 1872, pp.592-606; February 1872, pp.701-714; March 1872, pp.59-78].
*See Gary W. Crawford, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport: Greenwood Press 1995). For Le Fanus contributions to the Dublin University Magazine, see Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period (Gerrards Cross 1980), Vol. 2 [infra].
[ top ]
Reprint Editions
  • M. R. James, ed., Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery (London: G. Bell 1923 [var. 1925]), and Do., rep. 1994) [incl. “The Magician Earl”, based on “The Enchantment of Geroidh Iarla” by Patrick Kennedy - see details].
  • Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories (Sauk City, Wis: Arkham House 1945), x, 357pp. [2,000 copies].
  • V. S. Pritchett, intro., In a Glass Darkly (London: John Lehman 1947).
  • E. F. Bleiler, ed. & intro., The Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu (NY: Dover 1964), rep. as Ghost Stories and Mysteries (NY: Dover 1975), xiv, 467pp., ill. [port.].
  • Elizabeth Bowen, intro., The House by the Churchyard (London: A. Blond 1968).
  • Patrick F. Byrne, sel. & intro., Irish Ghost Stories of Sheridan Le Fanu (Dublin: Mercier Press 1978), ii, 113pp.
  • W. J. McCormack, ed., In a Glass Darkly [Gill’s Irish Classics] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), 314pp.
  • Thomas Kilroy, intro., The House by the Churchyard [Classic Irish Novels] (Belfast Appletree 1993), 419pp.
  • Robert Tracy, ed., In a Glass Darkly (OUP: World Classics 1993), 352pp.
  • Carmilla and Other Tales of Mystery (London: Signet Classic 1996) [incls. “Uncle Silas”, “Green Tea”, et al.]
  • Jim Rockhill, ed. & intro., Schalken the Painter and Others(BC: Ash-Tree Press 2002).
  • Jim Rockhill, ed. & intro., The Haunted Baronet and Others (BC: Ash-Tree Press 2003).
  • Jim Rockhill, ed. & intro., Mr Justice Harbottle and Others (BC: Ash-Tree Press 2005).
  • [q. ed.,] Wylder’s Hand ([London:] Traviata 2006), 560pp.

Query: rep. edn. of Cock and Anchor... Old Dublin [1845] (q. details), pbk. 358pp.; also Wylder’s Hand (1876; rep. 1963).

[ top ]

Bibliographical details

-
Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery, ed. M. R. James (1923) - Contents
  • “Madam Crowl’s Ghost”, from All the Year Round (Dec. 1870).
  • [attached].
  • “Squire Toby’s Will”, from Temple Bar (Jan. 1868).
  • “Dickon the Devil”, from London Society [Christmas Number] (Dec. 1872).
  • “The Child That Went with the Fairies”, from All the Year Round (Feb. 1870).
  • “The White Cat of Drumgunniol”, from All the Year Round (April 1870).
  • “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”, from Dublin University Magazine (Jan. 1851).
  • “Ghost Stories of Chapelizod”, from Dublin University Magazine (Jan. 1851).
  • “Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling”, from the Dublin University Magazine (April 1864).
  • “Sir Dominick’s Bargain”, from All the Year Round (July 1872).
  • “Ultor de Lacy”, from the Dublin University Magazine (Dec. 1861).
  • “The Vision of Tom Chuff”, from All the Year Round (Oct. 1870.
  • “Stories of Lough Guir”, from All the Year Round (April 1870).
 
—The title-story is available in RICORSO Library, “Irish Classics” - as attached.

The Carmilla File
  • Novels of Mystery from the Victorian Age, sel. & intro., Maurice Richardson (London: Pilot Press 1945), 678pp. [“Carmilla”, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Woman in White, and Notting Hill Mystery].
  • Carmilla & The Haunted Baronet (NY: Paperback Library 1970), 221pp.
  • The Best Horror Stories by Sheridan le Fanu (London: Sphere 1970), 158pp.
  • [“Carmilla”, with Schalken the Painter; Green Tea and The Familiar].
  • Carmilla (Mountain Ash: Sarob Press 1998), 83pp. [ltd. edn. of 200].
  • Carmilla [Zulma Classics] (Paris [actually GB]: Zulma 2005), 95pp.
  • A Crystal Age (Edinburgh: Soft Editions 2002), 1 CD ROM [“Carmilla”, with W. H. Hudson, A Crystal Age; H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines; Hugh Miller, My Schools and Schoolmasters, or, The Story of My Education; John Cowie, Silbury Dawning: The Alien Visitor Theory; James Hogg, The Brownie of Bodsbeck].
  • Carmilla (Edinburgh: FrontList Books 2003 ), 103pp.
  • Three Vampire Tales, ed. Anne Williams [New Riverside Edns.] (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2003), viii, 481pp. [“Carmilla”, with John Polidori, The Vampyre, and Bram Stoker, Dracula; incls. complete texts, introductions, historical context, & critical essays].
  • Carmilla ([Montana]: Kessinger [2004]), 77pp.
  • [...]

See also David Compton, Carmilla: a Gothic Thriller in Two Acts, based on a story by Sheridan Le Fanu (London: Miller 1973), 93pp. [4 men, 3 women].


The Purcell Papers (London: Bentley 1880)
Contents
  • “The Ghost and the Bonesetter” (1838), a light-hearted treatment of the ghost-story genre.
  • “The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh” (1838), involving a Faustian pact and set in a castle in rural Ireland.
  • “The Last Heir of Castle Connor” (1838), a study of the dispossession of Gaelic families in the period of the Penal Laws.
  • “The Drunkard’s Dream” (1838), in which the title-character finds himself in Hell.
  • “Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter” (1839), in which a demon lover returns from the grave to claim the bride of the 17th century painter of that name.
  • “Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess” (1838), being the draft-version of Uncle Silas, therein transposed to Derbyshire.
  • “A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family” (1839), a later developed as The Wyvern Mystery (1869).
—See Wikipedia online; accessed 08.06.2010.

Digital Full-text Editions of Le Fanu in Various Resources
1. Gutenberg Project see links
2. Literature Online see links
3. RICORSO > Irish Classics see links
[Note: Each of the links given here is pointed at the corresponding table-of-contents as set out in the Quotations file, infra.]

Gutenburg Project holds ...
The Purcell Papers by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1880)

[ To view num. portraits, title-pages, and illustrations of J. S. Le Fanu can be viewed on Google, search J. S. Le Fanu > images - online. ]

[ top ]

Criticism
Author studies
  • Michael H. Begnal, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1971) [q.pp.].
  • W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford 1980; rev. & enl. Dublin: Lilliput 1991, 1996; rep. Stroud: Sutton Publ. 1997).
  • Ivan Melada, Sheridan Le Fanu (Boston: G. K. Hall 1987), 142pp. [1 pl. ports.].
  • Teresa Mangum, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Ungovernable Governesses [Studies in the Novel] (N. Texas UP 1997), 183pp..
  • Gaïd Girard, Joseph Le Sheridan Fanu: Une écriture fantastique (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur 2005), 456pp. [Bibl., pp.421-51; Index].
  • Jean Lozes, Joseph Sheridan le Fanu: Romancier et Nouvellistes Anglo-Irlandais (1814-1873) [These à la carte] (Septentrion Presses Universitaire [2005]), 970pp.
  • James Walton, Vision and Vacancy: The Fictions of J. S. Le Fanu (UCD Press 2007), 240pp.
Articles & Chapters
  • V. S. Pritchett, Introduction to In a Glass Darkly [by] J. S. Le Fanu (London: John Lehman 1947).
  • Arthur H. 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].
  • Nelson Browne, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [English Novelists Ser.] (London: Arthur Barker 1951).
  • S. M. Ellis, Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others (NY: Books for Libraries 1968), pp.179-91.
  • Peter Penzoldt, ‘Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’, in The Supernatural in Fiction (London 1952; rep. NY: Humanities Press 1965) [q.pp.].
  • Patrick Diskin, ‘Poe, Le Fanu, and the Sealed Room Mystery’, in Notes and Queries, 211 (Sept. 1966), pp.337-39.
  • Robert Lee Wolff, Introduction to ‘The Irish Fiction of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’, introduction to The House by the Churchyard (NY: Arno Press 1979), pp.v-xxv.
  • Joseph Browne, ‘Ghosts & Ghouls and Le Fanu’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 8, 1 (June 1982) pp.5-15.
  • Julian Moyhihan, ‘The Politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic: Maturin, Le Fanu and “The Return of the Repressed”’, in Heinz Kosok, ed., Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature [Wupertaler Schriftenreihe Lit., 19] (Bonn: Verlag Herbert Grundemann 1992), pp.43-53.
  • Wayne Hall, ‘Le Fanu’s House by the Marketplace’, in Éire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, XXXI, 1 (Spring 1986), pp.55-72.
  • Patricia Coughlan, ‘Doubles, Shadows, Sedan-chairs and the Past: The Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu’, in Michael Allen & Angela Wilzox, ed., Critical Approaches to Anglo-Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1989, 116-30pp.
  • Marjorie Howe, ‘Misalliances and Anglo-Irish Tradition in Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas’, in Nineteenth-centrury Literature, 47, 2 (Sept. 1992) [q.pp.].
  • James Swafford, ‘Tradition and Guilt in Le Fanu’s Schalken the Painter’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 14, 2 (Jan. 1989), pp.48-59.
  • Robert Tracy, ‘Loving You All Ways: Vamps, Vampires, Necrophiles and Necrofilles in Nineteenth-century Fiction’, in Regina Barreca, ed., Sex and Death in Victorian Literature (London: Macmillan 1990) [q.pp.].Jolanta Nalecz-Wojtczak, Picture and Meaning: The Visual Dimension of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Fiction (Lodz [UP] 1991), q.pp.
  • Theo Eldemann, ‘The Unlucky Joseph Le Fanu’, in Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, 20, 2 (1991): pp.3-24.
  • Jean Lozes, Un roman gothique irlandais: “Uncle Silas” de Sheridan Le Fanu (Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux 1992), 128pp. [trans.?]
  • R. F. Foster, ‘Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History’, in Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (London: Penguin 1993) [Chap. 11], pp.212-32.
  • Julian Moynihan, ‘The Politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic: Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and the Return of the Repressed’ [Chap. VI], in Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton UP 1995), pp.109-142.
  • Luke Gibbons, ‘Some Hysterical Hatred”: History, Hysteria and the Literary Revival’, in Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 1997, pp.7-23.
  • Teresa Mangum, ‘The Gothic and the Governess: Sheridan le Fanu’s Uncle Silas’, in Studies in the Novel, 19, 2 (Summer 1997), cp.219.
  • Richard Haslam, ‘Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and the Fantastic Semantics of Ghost-Colonial Ireland’, in That Other World: The Supernatural and Fantastic in Irish Literature and its Contexts, ed. Bruce Stewart (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1998), [q.pp.].
  • W. J. McCormack, ‘J. Sheridan Le Fanu’, in The Handbook to Gothic Literature, ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts (London: Macmillan 1998), pp.145-146.
  • Jan Jedrzejewski, ed., Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The Cock and Anchor [ Ulster Monograph Ser., 9] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2000), Introduction, pp.ix-xxiii.
  • Ib Johansen, ‘Shadows in a Black Mirror: Reflections on the Irish Fantastic from Sheridan Le Fanu to John Banville’, in Nordic Irish Studies, ed. Michael Böss & Irene Gilsenan Nordin, 1, 1 (2002), pp.51-62 [see copy - attached].
  • Victor Sage, ‘Resurrecting the Regency: Horror and Nineteenth-century Comedy in Le Fanu’s Fiction’, in Ruth Robbin & Julian Wolfreys, Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestation[s] in the Nineteenth Century (Baskingstoke: Palgrave 2000) [q.pp.].
  • Gary William Crawford, Jim Rochill & Brian J. Showers, ed., Reflections in an Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (NY: Hippocampus Pres 2011), 472pp. [see contents].

See also Maggie Kilgour, The Rise of the Gothic Novel (1995) and Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society 1930-1960 (1991); also bibliography of Gothic fiction maintained by Gary W. Crawford at Thesicklytaper > Le Fanu [online].

[ top ]
General Studies
  • Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1945).
  • Maurice Richardson, Novels of Mystery from the Victorian Age (London: Pilot Press 1945).
  • 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).
  • 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).
  • Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Methuenn 1981).
  • James Cahalan, Great Hatred, Little Room, The Irish Historical Novel (Syracuse UP/Gill & Macmillan 1983) [cp.71].
  • Jack Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares: The English Short Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood (Ohio UP 1984).
  • Victor Sage, Horror Fiction in the Protestant Tradition (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1988).
  • Neil Cornwell, The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1990).
  • Lyn Pykett, The Sensational Novel: From “The Woman in White” to “The Moonstone” (Plymouth: Northcote Hse. 1991).
  • W. J. McCormack, ‘The Intellectual Revival’ and ‘Irish Gothic’, in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane (Derry 1991), Vol. I [q.pp.].
  • W. J. McCormack, Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen (Manchester UP 1993).
  • Margot Gayle Backus, The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (London: Duke UP 1999), Chap. 4: ‘“A Very Strange Agony”: Parables of Sexual Subject Formation in Melmoth the Wanderer, Carmilla, and Dracula’ [q.pp.]
  • Selina Guinness, ‘“Protestant Magic” Reappraised: Evangelism, Dissent and Theosophy’, in Irish University Review, 33, 1 (Spring-Summer 2003) [q.pp.].
  • George O’Brien, The Irish Novel, 1800-1910 (Cork UP 2015), p.87.

Bibliography

  • Gary William Crawford, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography (.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1995), x, 155, [2]pp.
 

[ top ]

Gary William Crawford, Jim Rochill & Brian J. Showers, eds., Reflections in an Glass Darkly:
Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu
(NY: Hippocampus Pres 2011), 472pp.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD - W. J. Mc Cormack
INTRODUCTION - Gary William Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers
 
I. SOME NOTES ON BIOGRAPHY
  • The Dictionary of National Biography - C. Litton Falkiner
  • A Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Alfred Perceval Graves.
  • Excerpt from 70 Years of Irish Life - William Le Fanu.
  • Anecdotes from Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others - S. M. Ellis.
  • The Portraits of Le Fanu - Jim Rockhill, Brian J. Showers and Douglas A. Anderson
  • A Void Which Cannot Be Filled Up: The Obituaries of J. S. Le Fanu - Brian J. Showers
 
II. GENERAL STUDIES
  • From The Supernatural in Fiction - Peter Penzoldt.
  • M. R. James on J. S. Le Fanu - M. R. James.
  • Sheridan Le Fanu - E. F. Benson.
  • An Irish Ghost - V. S. Pritchett.
  • “Prologue” and“Epilogue” to Madam Crowl’s Ghost - M. R. James.
  • Doubles, Shadows, Sedan-Chairs, and the Past:“The Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu” - Patricia Coughlan.
 
III. SOME SPECIAL TOPICS
  • Making Light in the Shadow Box: The Artistry of Le Fanu - Kel Roop.
  • Le Fanu’s House by the Marketplace - Wayne Hall.
  • Sheridan Le Fanu and the Spirit of 1798 - Albert Power.
  • H. P. Lovecraft’s Response to the Work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Jim Rockhill.
  • “A Regular Contributor”: Le Fanu’s Short Stories, All the Year Round, and the Influence of Dickens - Simon Cooke.
  • A Shared Vision: Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr - Gary W. Crawford.
  • Vampyr’s Ghosts and Demons - Mark Le Fanu.
 
IV. CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS
[not itemised ]
V. STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS
  • “Green Tea”: The Archetypal Ghost Story - Jack Sullivan.
  • Forgotten Creator of Ghosts - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Possible Inspirer of the Brontës - Edna Kenton.
  • “Introduction” to The House by the Churchyard - Elizabeth Bowen.
  • Three Ghost Stories:“The Judge’s House”,“Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House on Aungier Street”, and“Mr. Justice Harbottle” - Carol A. Senf.
  • “Introduction” to Uncle Silas - M. R. James.
  • Conversations in a Shadowed Room: The Blank Spaces in “Green Tea” - John Langan.
  • “Introduction” to Uncle Silas - Elizabeth Bowen.
  • “Addicted to the Supernatural”: Spiritualism and Self-Satire in Le Fanu’s All in the Dark - Stephen Carver.
  • In the Name of the Mother: Perverse Maternity in “Carmilla” - Jarlath Killeen.
  • Crossing Boundaries, Mixing Genres in The Wyvern Mysteries - Sally C. Harris.
  • “I resolved to play the part of a good Samaritan”: Metafiction in J. S. Le Fanu’s “The Room in the Dragon Volant” - William Hughes
  • The Child that Went with the Faeries - Peter Bell.
  • The Smashed Looking Glass: Fragmentation and Narrative Perversity in Willing to Die - Victor Sage.
 
—Details available at Hippocampus Press - online; accessed 24.12.2012.

[ top ]

Commentary
See separate file [infra].

[ top ]

Quotations
See separate file [infra].

[ top ]

References
Justin McCarthy, gen. 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-the-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.[ top ]

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.

There is a substantial Wikipedia entry on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in Wikipedia - [online]

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 1: 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.

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period (Gerrards Cross 1980), Vol. 2, 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” (March 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”, in 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 Sullivan’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) [later enl. as The Wyvern Mystery]; “An Adventure of Hardress Fitzgerald, a Royalist Captain” (Feb. 1840; XV, 86, p.147); “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”, from Two Contributions from Reminiscences of a Bachelor (Jan. 1848; XXXI, 181, p.15); “Evenings with the Witchfinders” (passim 1848, a series; 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). [Contemporary printings as in Works, supra.]

Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers [rev. 1 vol. edn.] (Dublin: Lilliput Press 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., The 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, &c. Bibl. Jean Lozes, ed., ‘Fragment d’un journal intimes de J. S. Le Fanu... 18 Mai 1858’, [in] Caliban [new ser.], 10, 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 Modern Irish Literature, ed. R. J. Porter & J. D. Brophy (Syracuse UP 1972), pp.315-34; Kevin Sullivan, ‘Sheridan Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers 1838-40’, in Irish UniversityReview, 2, 1 (1972), pp.5-19; W. J. McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford 1980) [1298-99].

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2 selects The House by the Church-yard [883-89], with remarks at 832-54 [W. J. McCormack, ed.]; 930, 939, 990. See also FDA3, 384, 562, 655n. Note that William Richard Le Fanu (1816-1894), Seventy years of Irish Life is selected in FDA3 [387-91], with BIOG at 557; the family experienced hardships during Tithe War; ed. TCD, engineer; moved to Rathporeen House, Co. Cork, 1859, and met Anthony Trollope.

William Trevor, ed., Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories (1989; rep. 2010), incls. Le Fanu’s story “Green Tea”.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), lists Carmilla and remarks: ‘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. [J. S. le Fanu - BL 21 titles].

Charles Baldrick, ed., The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (OUP 1992), incls. ‘A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family’ [1839], pp.102-32.

The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature, ed. Steven Serafin & Valerie Grosvenor Myers (NY & London: Continuum 2003), article on “Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu” by M. Bernstein.

Belfast Central Public Library hods 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), and Do. (rep. 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).

[ top ]

Notes
Variations: On editorship of the Dublin University Magazine, the following variations are found: 1861-69 [OCIL]; 1869-72 [ODNB]; ‘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: 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 under Fitzgerald, supra.)

James Joyce (1): 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.)

James Joyce (1): Harry Levin remarks, in James Joyce: A Critical Introduction [1944] (London: Faber 1968), that Chapelizod is ‘also the setting for Le Fanu’s faded novel, The House by the Churchyard, which gains recogniton from Joyce on these grounds.’ [vide FW245.]

[ top ]

Films
Uncle Silas
(1947) - a film directed by Charles Frank with Jean Simmons [Caroline Ruthyn - sic], Katina Paxinou [Mme de Rouggiere -sic], Derrick De Marney [Uncle Silas]. There is an interesting review of this film online at EOFFTV which rates the film very highly, speaking of it as the first study in the genre of the breakdown of family, and quoting several academic studies of Gothic and gothic film in support of that interpretation and appraisal. A show-stealing performance by Paxinou as the mad governess is particularly praised [online]. Note: the film is not to be confused with My Uncle Silas being five stories by H. E. Bates about a roguish English countryman, dir. by Tom Clegg (released II in 2003).

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; Hammer films produced The Vampire Lovers, based on Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with Ingrid Pitt embroiled in fairly explicit scenes of lesbian seduction which attracted large Dublin audiences.

[ top ]