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Sheridan Le Fanu Horror Stories
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was a highly influential Irish author, born in Dublin, whose work spread across the English-speaking world, where his impression can be found in the stories of Wilkie Collins, M.R. James, Bram Stoker and many others. Although trained as a lawyer, he became a writer of sensational literature, exploring the dark and fantastic, becoming one of the foundational purveyors of classic horror ghost stories, including his famous early work of vampire fiction Carmilla. His father was Richard Sheridan, playwright of The Rivals and The School for Scandal. This new collection of Le Fanu's stories, with a new foreword, is a must-read selection of classic writing.
Flame Tree Gothic & Fantasy, as well as Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections, bring together the entire range of myth, folklore, epic literature and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.
Flame Tree Gothic & Fantasy, as well as Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections, bring together the entire range of myth, folklore, epic literature and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published April 29, 2025
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28 people want to read
About the author
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
1,376 books1,408 followersJoseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M.R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories". Three of his best-known works are Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard.
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November 18, 2025
I picked up this collection because I wanted to read "Carmilla", probably Le Fanu's most famous novella, but also because of the cover (I mean, come on! It's gorgeous!) and because I've never before found such an extensive collection of the author's short stories.
This collection gathers many of his most memorable ghost tales. It's a blend of Gothic and Irish folklore, with frequent psychological analyses. They may seem repetitive once you go past the first of its four parts (Haunted Houses, Haunted Men, Mystery Tales and Female Monsters), but read together, they form a portrait of a writer obsessed with guilt, inheritance, temptation, family curses, Faustian patterns, the invisible supernatural forces that haunt people.
While each tale stands alone, they share many elements: ancient castles sinking into ruin, country manors, family secrets, quiet villages where everyone knows the name of the local ghost. And in most tales, we have a modern intruder who tries to rationalize what he witnesses. Unlike the horror that we're used to today, these stories don't rely on plot twists, but we have gradual revelations, usually pieced together through letters, village gossip, or through his favourite device, the retrospective narration of someone who survived long enough to tell the tale.
His characters fall into a few archetypes, but they're written with surprising psychological depth, for such short texts: the brooding aristocrat burdened by guilt, the scholar or cleric, young women in danger, ordinary villagers who believe in curses, fairies and banshees. He is at his best with characters who are haunted psychologically, not only supernaturally.
Le Fanu's strong point is the atmosphere, marked by a kind of quiet dread. He loved his foggy marshlands and moonlit forests, but mostly his decaying manors and castles, with rooms lit by candles, and his Irish villages where superstition and fatalism are the norm. Even his lighter, folkloric stories carry this undertone of sadness, that thin veil between the living and the dead. He was clearly obsessed with liminality: doorways, windows, thresholds, forests, lakes. Le Fanu's ghosts are glimpses, shapes, things that seem to move in the peripheral vision. His horror lives in the almost seen, not in the certainty.
Le Fanu's writing is what one might expect from someone who lived in the 1800s. It's elegant, very descriptive, suggestive (he rarely shows the horror in full, instead letting the reader assemble the terror piece by piece). These stories include all the Gothic elements you might think of, including the narrative devices representative of the era. He's sometimes funny, with a dry Irish humor.
The standout tales, for me, were "Carmilla" ("Dracula"'s precursor, but with a female vampire), "Green Tea", "An Account of Some Disturbances in Aungier Street", "Schalken the Painter").
I would define this collection as a map of the Gothic, shaped by Irish folklore. Although it took me many weeks to finish, it was just what the doctor ordered for this autumn season.
This collection gathers many of his most memorable ghost tales. It's a blend of Gothic and Irish folklore, with frequent psychological analyses. They may seem repetitive once you go past the first of its four parts (Haunted Houses, Haunted Men, Mystery Tales and Female Monsters), but read together, they form a portrait of a writer obsessed with guilt, inheritance, temptation, family curses, Faustian patterns, the invisible supernatural forces that haunt people.
While each tale stands alone, they share many elements: ancient castles sinking into ruin, country manors, family secrets, quiet villages where everyone knows the name of the local ghost. And in most tales, we have a modern intruder who tries to rationalize what he witnesses. Unlike the horror that we're used to today, these stories don't rely on plot twists, but we have gradual revelations, usually pieced together through letters, village gossip, or through his favourite device, the retrospective narration of someone who survived long enough to tell the tale.
His characters fall into a few archetypes, but they're written with surprising psychological depth, for such short texts: the brooding aristocrat burdened by guilt, the scholar or cleric, young women in danger, ordinary villagers who believe in curses, fairies and banshees. He is at his best with characters who are haunted psychologically, not only supernaturally.
Le Fanu's strong point is the atmosphere, marked by a kind of quiet dread. He loved his foggy marshlands and moonlit forests, but mostly his decaying manors and castles, with rooms lit by candles, and his Irish villages where superstition and fatalism are the norm. Even his lighter, folkloric stories carry this undertone of sadness, that thin veil between the living and the dead. He was clearly obsessed with liminality: doorways, windows, thresholds, forests, lakes. Le Fanu's ghosts are glimpses, shapes, things that seem to move in the peripheral vision. His horror lives in the almost seen, not in the certainty.
Le Fanu's writing is what one might expect from someone who lived in the 1800s. It's elegant, very descriptive, suggestive (he rarely shows the horror in full, instead letting the reader assemble the terror piece by piece). These stories include all the Gothic elements you might think of, including the narrative devices representative of the era. He's sometimes funny, with a dry Irish humor.
The standout tales, for me, were "Carmilla" ("Dracula"'s precursor, but with a female vampire), "Green Tea", "An Account of Some Disturbances in Aungier Street", "Schalken the Painter").
I would define this collection as a map of the Gothic, shaped by Irish folklore. Although it took me many weeks to finish, it was just what the doctor ordered for this autumn season.
Displaying 1 of 1 review