Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873).
Biographical note
Novelist, son of a Dean of the Episcopal Church of Ireland, and grand-nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was ed. at Trinity College, Dublin, and became a contributor and ultimately proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine, in which many of his novels made their first appearance. Called to the Bar in 1839, he did not practise, and was first brought into notice by two ballads, Phaudrig Croohoore and Shamus O’Brien, which had extraordinary popularity. His novels, of which he wrote 12, include The Cock and Anchor (1845), Torlough O’Brien (1847), The House by the Churchyard (1863), Uncle Silas (perhaps the most popular) (1864), The Tenants of Malory (1867), In a Glass Darkly (1872), and Willing to Die (posthumously). They are generally distinguished by able construction, ingenuity of plot, and power in the presentation of the mysterious and supernatural. Among Irish novelists he is generally ranked next to Lever.
[From A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin, 1910]
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Works
- The Cock and the Anchor [1845] (revised as Morley Court, [1873])
- The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien [1847]
- Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery [1851]
- The House by the Churchyard [1863]
- Wylder's Hand [1863] [ read | download ]
- Uncle Silas [1864] [ read | download ]
- Guy Deverell [1865]
- The Prelude [1865]
- All in the Dark [1866]
- The Tenants of Malory [1867]
- A Lost Name [1868]
- Haunted Lives [1868]
- The Wyvern Mystery [1869]
- Checkmate [1871]
- The Chronicles of Golden Friars [1871]
- The Rose and the Key [1871]
- The Beautiful Poems of Shamus O'Brien [1871]
- In a Glass Darkly [1872] (Anthology containing:
- Willing to Die [1873]
- The Purcell Papers [1880] [ read | download ]
- The Watcher and Other Weird Stories [1894]
- The Evil Guest [1895] [ read | download ]
