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Updated: May 13, 2025
During his travels he never drank anything but green tea, and if Le Fanu's ideas in In a Glass Darkly are to be respected, this habit is partly responsible for his extraordinary bias. He deals with subjects that are discussed in no other book. He had seen many lands, and, like Hafiz, could say: "Plunder I bore from far and near, From every harvest gleaned an ear;"
The general characteristics of such tales are too well known to need more than a passing reference; a fairly typical specimen of the vampire story, though it does not profess to be more than the merest fiction, is Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla, while a very remarkable account of an unusual form of this creature is to be found in Isis Unveiled, vol. i., p. 454.
One may mention in passing the excursions into broad comedy of another brilliant Irishman Le Fanu's short stories in the Purcell Papers, such as the Quare Gander, or Billy Molowney's Taste of Love and Glory.
Le Fanu's literary life may be divided into three distinct periods. During the first of these, and till his thirtieth year, he was an Irish ballad, song, and story writer, his first published story being the 'Adventures of Sir Robert Ardagh, which appeared in the 'Dublin University Magazine' of 1838.
"In his method of touching the well-springs of fear, of pity, and of horror, Mr. Blackwood often exhibits powers which can only properly be called masterly. In its way his work bids fair to become classical . . . an art superior to that of Bulwer-Lytton, at least as fine as Le Fanu's, and hardly, if at all, inferior to that exhibited by the supreme living masters of the short story, Mr.
Indeed, we may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar, simply because they seem to speak straight from a people's heart, not to be the mere echoes of medieval romance. 'Phaudrig Croohore' did not appear in print in the 'Dublin University Magazine' till 1844, twelve years after its composition, when it was included amongst the Purcell Papers.
Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu's friendship, and only they, can form any idea of the true character of the man; for after the death of his wife, to whom he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsook general society, in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, and charm of conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal of an Irish wit and scholar of the old school.
Justice Harbottle in Sheridan Le Fanu's "In a Glass Darkly," in which the wicked judge goes headlong per fas et nefas to his object of getting the husband of his mistress hanged. Some time later Stevenson and his wife together drafted a play called The Hanging Judge.
It next was published as 'The Murdered Cousin' in a collection of Christmas stories, and finally developed into the three-volume novel we have just noticed. There are about Le Fanu's narratives touches of nature which reconcile us to their always remarkable and often supernatural incidents.
Even Father Prout at this time of day is little more than a dried specimen labelled for reference, or at most preserved in vitality by the immortal Groves of Blarney. But neither that work, nor even The Night before Larry was stretched, nor Le Fanu's ballad of Shemus O'Brien, can rank altogether as literature.
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