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Product Description
`the ideal reading...for the hours after midnight' Thus Henry James described the style of supernatural tale of which Sheridan Le Fanu was a master. Known in nineteenth-century Dublin as `The Invisible Prince' because of his reclusive and nocturnal habits, Le Fanu was fascinated by the occult. His writings draw on the Gothic tradition, elements of Irish folklore, and even on the social and political anxieties of his Anglo-Irish contemporaries. In exploring sometimes inexplicable terrors, the tales focus on the unease of the haunted men and women who encounter the supernatural, rather than on the origin or purpose of the visitant. This makes for spine-chilling reading. The five stories presented here have been collected by Dr Hesselius, a `metaphysical' doctor, the forerunner of the modern psychiatrist, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience.
About the Author
Robert Tracy has also edited The Macdermots of Ballycloran and Nina Balatka & Linda Tressel for the World's Classics.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'In a Glass Darkly' is a collection of hair-raising tales selected from those recorded by Dr Martin Hesselius during the many years he spent working to understand and explain the seemingly supernatural incidents that came to his attention. The stories are:
1) 'Green Tea' - a clergyman believes himself persecuted by a malevolent monkey.
2) 'The Familiar' - an ex-naval captain is threatened by an aggrieved ghost from his past.
3) 'Mr Justice Harbottle' - a respectable gentleman is driven from his lodgings by the activity of a mean old judge who has been dead for some years.
4) 'The Room in Le Dragon Volant' - a rich English man on tour becomes enmeshed in an extraordinary scam whilst travelling from Brussels to Paris.
5) 'Carmilla' - the daughter of an English father, living in a schloss in Styria, is befriended by a young lady who has unusually needle-sharp teeth.
As Henry James quite rightly suggested, Le Fanu's stories are the ideal reading material after the chimes of midnight. These five stories provide a wonderful chill before snuggling down to sleep. They are longer than the tales in Le Fanu's 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' collection, where the stories are between 10 and 25 pages in length. The tales in this collection vary in length between about 30 and 100 pages.
I recommend 'In a Glass Darkly' to anyone who enjoys old-fashioned ghost stories.
1) 'Green Tea' - a clergyman believes himself persecuted by a malevolent monkey.
2) 'The Familiar' - an ex-naval captain is threatened by an aggrieved ghost from his past.
3) 'Mr Justice Harbottle' - a respectable gentleman is driven from his lodgings by the activity of a mean old judge who has been dead for some years.
4) 'The Room in Le Dragon Volant' - a rich English man on tour becomes enmeshed in an extraordinary scam whilst travelling from Brussels to Paris.
5) 'Carmilla' - the daughter of an English father, living in a schloss in Styria, is befriended by a young lady who has unusually needle-sharp teeth.
As Henry James quite rightly suggested, Le Fanu's stories are the ideal reading material after the chimes of midnight. These five stories provide a wonderful chill before snuggling down to sleep. They are longer than the tales in Le Fanu's 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' collection, where the stories are between 10 and 25 pages in length. The tales in this collection vary in length between about 30 and 100 pages.
I recommend 'In a Glass Darkly' to anyone who enjoys old-fashioned ghost stories.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a collection of uncommon merit, and readers will no doubt enjoy such stories as 'Mr Justice Harbottle' quite as much as the renowned vampire tale 'Carmilla'. But to those unfamiliar with the fourth story, 'The Room in the Dragon Volant' one can only say that this haunting, plangent masterpiece is likely to be the most memorable of all. This book contains the best of le Fanu's tales, better than 'Madame Crowl's Ghost', and represents the apogee of Victorian ghostly fiction.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a superb collection. Green tea is probably the least good but still good. The Familiar is a great tale of a man haunted by his past and eventually destroyed by it. Mr Justice Harbottle is very endearing and one of my favourite ghost stories. The Room in The Dragon Volant is long but well worth it - what could have been the perfect crime, if only...Carmilla, the vampire tale, is to my mind superior to Stoker's overlong Dracula, and was its inspiration.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
In A Glass Darkly - A Review by Barry Van-Asten
Published in 1872, 'In A Glass Darkly' by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) is a collection of five short stories in the Gothic horror tradition. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. B. P. Van-asten
Enjoyably creepy
Le Fanu must rate as one of the masters of the supernatural short story, along side M.R. James and Poe. If you enjoy them you will enjoy this.
Published 5 months ago by HazeyJanet
Understatedly scary!
This is a collection of 5 short stories that are formulated into a casebook of Dr Martin Hesselius, a psychologist. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Annie Fur Lactic
Gothic splendour!
Sheridan Le Fanu's classic collection of Gothic fiction is a delight for the connoiseur of weird tales. These stories are gathered as belonging to the papers of one Dr. Read more
Published on 6 July 2009 by D. De Gruijter
Probably only scary if you suffer from a nervous psychological...
Some books are so bad that you just can't finish them. This isn't one of those books. Which is unforunate as when you read it you constantly wish you weren't. Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2008 by S. Pollard
An Apt Title.
Whatever the merits of Le Fanu's collection of short stories, the Wordsworth edition is dismal.
The typesetting errors are so frequent that it was only after some... Read more
The typesetting errors are so frequent that it was only after some... Read more
Published on 15 Jun 2007 by Typo Detective
superficial tales- real or imagination?
The classic in the ghost story genre. Most of his
followers as M.R. James or E.F. Benson admitt that they were highly inspired by J.S. LeFanu. Read more
followers as M.R. James or E.F. Benson admitt that they were highly inspired by J.S. LeFanu. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2002 by Bernd Philipp
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