Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73,) fully Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Celebrated for his extraordinary preoccupation with mystery and the supernatural, he is mainly remembered for his classic ghost stories and mystery novel.
Born in Dublin, Le Fanu was a great-nephew of the Irish-born British playwright Richard Sheridan. Le Fanu was educated at Dublin’s Trinity College and became a lawyer in 1839, but soon abandoned law for journalism. He became editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine in 1869, and later bought three Dublin newspapers, The Warder, The Dublin Evening Packet, and The Evening Mail.
Considered “the father of the English ghost story,” Le Fanu is recognized for combining Gothic literary conventions with realistic techniques to create tales of psychological insight and supernatural terror. His mystery novels include The House by the Churchyard (1861) and Uncle Silas (1864.) Many of his short stories are collected in In a Glass Darkly (1872.)
Le Fanu wrote 14 other works and two collections of poems.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sheridan Le Fanu
Old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed.
—Sheridan Le Fanu
Topics: Death
The world, he resumed after a short pause, “has no faith in any man’s conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge.”
—Sheridan Le Fanu
There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
—Sheridan Le Fanu
There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.
—Sheridan Le Fanu
How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long — the care of cares — the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven — and straight you find a new stratum there.
—Sheridan Le Fanu
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Elizabeth Bowen Irish Novelist
- Oscar Wilde Irish Poet, Playwright
- James Joyce Irish Novelist
- Jonathan Swift Irish Satirist
- Laurence Sterne Irish Anglican Novelist
- Brendan Behan Irish Poet
- Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington Irish Novelist
- Joyce Cary English Novelist
- Samuel Lover Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter
- Edmund Burke British Philosopher, Statesman