{\b Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 28 August 1814

{\b Date of Death}.: 7 February 1873

{\b Works}.

Irish novelist, short story writer and poet. He was a prolific writer of ghost 
stories, the best of which are to be found in In a Glass Darkly (1872). Of his 
fourteen novels, The House by the Churchyard (1861) and Uncle Silas (1864) 
have proved their lasting appeal. His ballads were the most popular of his 
works in verse, and a collected edition of his Poems was compiled by A.P. 
Graves in 1896.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Hymn from "Beatrice"'.

{\b General Comment}.

Le Fanu was related to the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan on his 
mother's side. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and was called to the bar 
in 1839, but he abandoned law for a career as a writer. He had already 
published several stories in the Dublin University Magazine, and he was 
encouraged by the success of his ballad 'Shamus O'Brien'.

His first two novels, The Cock and Anchor (1845) and Torlogh O'Brien (1847), 
were influenced by Walter Scott and William Ainsworth, but he is best 
remembered for his tales of mystery and the macabre, which he was to develop 
later in his career. He also was active in Irish journalism, owning and 
editing several publications, including the Dublin University Magazine in the 
1860s.

Le Fanu's supernatural tales made him a best-seller in the later Victorian 
period, though he was subsequently neglected in the early twentieth century. 
Interest was revived in 1923 when another great writer of ghost stories, M.R. 
James, issued a selection entitled Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of 
Mystery.