The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Gothic Project - Biography - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (August 28, 1814 – February 7, 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction. He was a leading ghost story writer of his time, 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 the locked-room mystery Uncle Silas, the lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and the historical novel The House by the Churchyard.

Early life

Sheridan Le Fanu was born at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family of Huguenot, Irish, and English descent. He had an elder sister, Catherine Frances, and a younger brother, William Richard. His parents were Thomas Philip Le Fanu and Emma Lucretia Dobbin. Both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights (his niece Rhoda Broughton would become a successful novelist), and his mother was also a writer, producing a biography of Charles Edward Herbert Orpen (1838). He became the owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin Evening Mail and the Warder.

On December 18, 1844, Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister, George Bennett, and granddaughter of John Bennett, a justice of the Court of King's Bench. The couple then traveled to his parents' home in Abington for Christmas. They took a house in Warrington Place near the Grand Canal in Dublin. Their first child, Eleanor, was born in 1845, followed by Emma in 1846, Thomas in 1847, and George in 1854

In 1856 the family moved from Warrington Place to the house of Susanna's parents at 18 Merrion Square. Her parents retired to live in England. Le Fanu never owned the house, but rented it from his brother-in-law for £22 per annum (which he still failed to pay in full).

His personal life also became difficult at this time, as his wife suffered from increasing neurotic symptoms. She had a crisis of faith and attended religious services at the nearby St. Stephen's Church. She also discussed religion with William, Le Fanu's younger brother, as Le Fanu had apparently stopped attending services. She suffered from anxiety after the deaths of several close relatives, including her father two years before, which may have led to marital problems.

In April 1858 she suffered a "hysterical attack" and died the following day in unclear circumstances. She was buried in the Bennett family vault in Mount Jerome Cemetery beside her father and brothers. The anguish of Le Fanu's diaries suggests that he felt guilt as well as loss. From then on he did not write any fiction until the death of his mother in 1861. He turned to his cousin Lady Gifford for advice and encouragement, and she remained a close correspondent until her death at the end of the decade.

In 1861 he became the editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine, and he began to take advantage of double publication, first serializing in the "Dublin University Magazine, and then revising for the English market. He published both The House by the Churchyard and Wylders Hand in this way. After lukewarm reviews of the former novel, set in the Phoenix Park area of Dublin, Le Fanu signed a contract with Richard Bentley, his London publisher, which specified that future novels be stories "of an English subject and of modern times," a step Bentley thought necessary for Le Fanu to satisfy the English audience. Le Fanu succeeded in this aim in 1864, with the publication of Uncle Silas," which he set in Derbyshire. In his last short stories, however, Le Fanu returned to Irish folklore as an inspiration and encouraged his friend Patrick Kennedy to contribute folklore to the D.U.M.

Le Fanu died of a heart attack in his native Dublin on February 7, 1873, at the age of 58. According to Russell Kirk, in his essay Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale in The Surly Sullen Bell, Le Fanu "is believed to have literally died of fright"; but Kirk does not give the circumstances. Today there is a road and a park in Ballyfermot, near his childhood home in southwest Dublin, named after him.

Work

Le Fanu worked in many genres but remains best known for his horror fiction. He was a meticulous craftsman and frequently reworked plots and ideas from his earlier writing in subsequent pieces. Many of his novels, for example, are expansions and refinements of earlier short stories. He specialized in tone and effect rather than "shock horror" and liked to leave important details unexplained and mysterious. He avoided overt supernatural effects: in most of his major works, the supernatural is strongly implied but a "natural" explanation is also possible. The demonic monkey in Green Tea could be a delusion of the story's protagonist, who is the only person to see it; in The Familiar, Captain Barton's death seems to be supernatural but is not actually witnessed, and the ghostly owl may be a real bird. This technique influenced later horror artists, both in print and on film. Though other writers have since chosen less subtle techniques, Le Fanu's finest tales, such as the vampire novella Carmilla and the short story Schalken the Painter, remain some of the most powerful in the genre. He had an enormous influence on one of the 20th century's most important ghost story writers, M. R. James, and although his work fell out of favor in the early part of the 20th century, towards the end of the century interest in his work increased and remains comparatively strong.

The Purcell Papers

His earliest twelve short stories, written between 1838 and 1840, purport to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. They were published in the Dublin University Magazine and were later collected as The Purcell Papers (1880). They are mostly set in Ireland and include some classic stories of gothic horror, with gloomy castles, supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, madness, and suicide. Also apparent are nostalgia and sadness for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand as a mute witness to this history. Some of the stories still often appear in anthologies.

Spalatro

An anonymous novella Spalatro: from the notes of Fra Giacomo, published in the Dublin University Magazine in 1843, was added to the Le Fanu canon as late as 1980, being recognized as Le Fanu's work by W.J. McCormack in his biography of that year. Spalatro has a typically Gothic Italian setting, featuring a bandit as the hero, as in Ann Radcliffe (whose 1797 novel The Italian includes a repentant minor villain of the same name). More disturbing, however, is the hero Spalatro's necrophiliac passion for an undead blood-drinking beauty, who seems to be a predecessor of Le Fanu's later female vampire Carmilla. Like Carmilla, this undead femme fatale is not portrayed in an entirely negative way and attempts, but fails, to save the hero Spalatro from the eternal damnation that seems to be his destiny.

Le Fanu wrote this story after the death of his elder sister Catherine in March 1841. She had been ailing for about ten years, but her death came as a great shock to him.

Legacy and influence

In addition to M. R. James, several other writers have expressed strong admiration for Le Fanu's fiction. E.F. Benson stated that Le Fanu's stories Green Tea, The Familiar, and Mr Justice Harbottle are instinct with an awfulness which custom cannot stale, and this quality is due, as in The Turn of the Screw, to Le Fanu's admirably artistic methods in setting and narration." Benson added, "[Le Fanu's] best work is of the first rank, while as a 'flesh-creeper' he is unrivalled. No one else has so sure a touch in mixing the mysterious atmosphere in which horror darkly breeds." Jack Sullivan has asserted that Le Fanu is "one of the most important and innovative figures in the development of the ghost story" and that Le Fanu's work has had "an incredible influence on the genre; [he is] regarded by M. R. James, E. F. Bleiler, and others as the most skilful writer of supernatural fiction in English."

Le Fanu's work influenced several later writers. Most famously, Carmilla influenced Bram Stoker in the writing of Dracula. M. R. James' ghost fiction was influenced by Le Fanu's work in the genre. Oliver Onions's supernatural novel The Hand of Kornelius Voyt (1939) was inspired by Le Fanu's Uncle Silas.