Uncle Silas

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, J Sheridan Le Fanu

Overview

The foremost teller of scary stories in his day and a profound influence on both the novelists and filmmakers of the 20th century, Anglo-Irish author JOSEPH THOMAS SHERIDAN LE FANU (1814–1873) has, sadly, fallen out of scholarly and popular favor, and unfairly so. To this day, contemporary readers who happen across his works praise his talent for weaving a tense literary atmosphere tinged by the supernatural and bolstered by hints of ambiguous magic. First published in 1864, Uncle Silas, one of his more famous works, is a macabre tale of the death-haunted mansion known as Knowl, and Maud Ruthyn, who narrates for us the ominous goings-on there through her curtain of obsession with the dark and the dead. Considered by some to be among the best horror novels ever written, this is certainly a pinnacle of Victorian suspense that continues to grip sophisticated readers today. With a series of new editions of Le Fanu’s works, Cosimo is proud to reintroduce modern book lovers to the writings of the early master of suspense fiction who pioneered the concept of “psychological horror.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605203393
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	11/01/2008
Pages:	444
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814. He was the great-nephew of the playwright Richard Sheridan. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and called to the bar in 1839, but chose instead to pursue a career in journalism. He began his writing career by publishing a number of stories anonymously in the Dublin University Magazine, which had been founded in 1833 by a group of Trinity College students. Le Fanu went on to purchase the magazine in 1861 and became its editor. From 1840 onwards he bought and edited the Warden and the Protestant Guardian, among other magazines and newspapers.

His first two novels, The Cock and Anchor (1845) and Torlogh O'Brien (1847), followed the style of Sir Walter Scott. After purchasing the Dublin University Magazine, in which much of his writing was serialized, he wrote the tales that made him a bestseller. These novels use mystery and the supernatural to explore the psychological effects of fear, and often deal with a young, innocent person being drawn into a dangerous situation in which older people conspire to swindle and harm them, as in Uncle Silas (1864). His other works include The House by the Churchyard (1863), Wylder's Hand (1864), The Wyvern Mystery (1869) and The Rose and the Key (1871). In 1872 he collected and published the remarkable stories of In a Glass Darkly, including the famous story of a female vampire, 'Carmilla', which predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by 25 years and formed the basis of the 1932 film Vampyr. After his death in 1873, Le Fanu's works faded in popularity, but interest was revived in 1923 when a collection of stories was published, entitled Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery.