Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

“He stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories. That is my deliberate verdict, after reading all the supernatural tales I have been able to get hold of. Nobody sets the scene better than he, nobody touches in the effective detail more deftly.” Thus wrote one master of the supernatural story, M. R. James, about another: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73). James’s comments came in the introduction to a volume of forgotten Le Fanu tales, Madam Crowl’s Ghost, which James edited, and which saw print exactly fifty years after Le Fanu’s death. During that half-century, Le Fanu’s popularity had slowly but surely diminished, and in the 1920s he was largely known only as the author of the popular novel Uncle Silas. Thanks to James, his supernatural tales underwent a revival, and modern readers can now appreciate how crucial a role Le Fanu played in the development of the ghost story, liberating it from its Gothic trappings and introducing a more psychological realistic aspect, which would be further developed by twentieth century writers. Over a period of some thirty-five years, he produced some of the best, and most influential, weird tales ever written.

About

Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870 - 73,in his introduction, Jim Rockhill examines Le Fanu’s final years and the supernatural work he produced during them; and also reveals the truth behind the writer’s death, which according to previous accounts was sufficiently dramatic to have come from one of his own stories.

Edition Details

• Dust Jacket illustrated by Douglas Walters.
• This is a full clothbound edition limited to 650 copies.

External Links

• Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870 - 73. ISFDB entry for Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870 - 73