Carmilla, Green Tea, and Other Horrors: The Best Ghost Stories and Weird Fiction of J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Oldstyle Tales of Murder, Mystery, Horror, and Hauntings)

by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, M. Grant Kellermeyer (Illustrations)

His supernatural fiction was unparalleled in the Victorian Era. It inspired Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, and E. F. Benson. M. R. James was a worshipful devotee who resurrected his legacy and modeled his ghost stories after his style. Bram Stoker reworked his erotic vampire fiction to write his masterpieces, "Dracula" and "The Judge's House." J. Sheridan Le Fanu was the most influential, original, and inspirational horror writer of his time, and unlike many of his peers, his writing has not become dated or it still carries his trademark atmosphere of unsettling discomfort and uncanny fear. Le Fanu's psychological ghost stories and weird fiction are remarkable for the way in which they merge elements which should be diametrically the conscious and unconscious, life and death, heaven and hell, right and wrong, light and darkness, public self and private self. He sets his stories in a world of deep twilight -- a chiaroscuro of deep shadows broken up with faint light and vague definitions. His cosmos is unforgiving, malicious, and unlike Lovecraft who feared a world where mankind didn't matter, Le Fanu depicted a punishing spiritual order where every sin, every misstep, and every crime was closely watched and viciously, mercilessly punished. His murky universe is populated with demon lovers, haunted portraits, seductive ghosts, hanging judges, demonic rats, maddening visions of hell, animated corpses, sensual vampires, evil fairies, shape-shifting goblins, spectral hands, haunted candles, malevolent phantoms, and the ghosts of evil men who cozy up to the living in disturbingly intimate ways.TALES INCLUDED in this ANNOTATED Drunkard's Dream | The Sexton's Adventure | The Familiar | Disturbances in Aungier Street | The Ghost of a Hand | Narrative of a Haunted House | Wicked Captain Walshawe | Squire Toby's Will | Stories of Lough Guir | Madam Crowl's Ghost | Dickon the Devil | Sir Robert Ardagh | Schalken the Painter | Ultor de Lacy | Green Tea | The Child That Went with the Fairies | White Cat of Drumgunniol | Sir Dominick's Bargain | Laura Silver Bell | Carmilla | Mr Justice Harbottle

434 pages, Paperback

Published September 29, 2016

About the author

Joseph 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.

Reviews

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never has a book made me feel as cynical or morally pessimistic. J. S. Le Fanu's Victorian ghost tales and folk horror exude an air of decay and doom like no-one else's, primarily due to a grim Calvinist-based theology lurking in the background. His stories are uniformly fascinating, from the folktale-based vignettes to the longer, well-known masterpieces. Of course, the talented Mr. Kellermeyer provides engaging anecdotes and delightful illustrations.

M.R. James may have honed the ghost story to its sharpest point, but I would argue that Le Fanu's tales--with that signature atmosphere of depravity and decay--outdo James in their sheer ability to haunt.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection housing all of my fave Le Fanu (except spalatro part two).
Though his star may have waned, criminally ignored in contrast to the likes of Poe, Le Fanu is top drawer, hugely influential to the writers who followed. He was championed by the likes of MR James and Henry James, the former collecting some of his tales and publishing them in an anthology, so preserving and bringing them to the public's attention.