Books with author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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Addicted to laudanum and prey to inexplicable visions, Silas appears like a spirit to his neice Maud. Silas has his own plans for Maud and the fortune she will inherit. Uncle Silas is LeFanu's best-known novel, dealing with themes of spiritualism, secret corruption, greed, lust, and other peculiar Victorian obsessions. A classic novel of spiritual terror by opne of the true masters of the form.

At the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars, wealthy British heir Richard Beckett decides to spend some time in France. On his way there, he stumbles across an overturned carriage and encounters two people who will alter the course of his life. Afterwards, he makes his way to a nearby inn -- and unknowingly checks himself into a room that is believed to be cursed.

In Uncle Silas, Sheridan Le Fanu’s most celebrated novel, Maud Ruthyn, the young, naïve heroine, is plagued by Madame de la Rougierre from the moment the enigmatic older woman is hired as her governess. A liar, bully, and spy, when Madame leaves the house, she takes her dark secret with her. But when Maud is orphaned, she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, her father’s mysterious brother and a man with a scandalous-even murderous-past. And, once again, she encounters Madame, whose sinister role in Maud’s destiny becomes all too clear. With its subversion of reality and illusion, and its exploration of fear through the use of mystery and the supernatural, Uncle Silas shuns the conventions of traditional horror and delivers a chilling psychological thriller.

It was winter—that is, about the second week in November—and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys—a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawing-room. It was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped.

Why buy our paperbacks? Expedited shipping High Quality Paper Made in USA Standard Font size of 10 for all books 30 Days Money Back Guarantee BEWARE of Low-quality sellers Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars. Most of them use low-quality papers & binding. Their pages fall off easily. Some of them even use very small font size of 6 or less to increase their profit margin. It makes their books completely unreadable. How is this book unique? Unabridged (100% Original content) Font adjustments & biography included Illustrated Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 26 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The story is often anthologized and has been adapted many times in film and other media. Le Fanu presents the story as part of the casebook of Dr. Hesselius, whose departures from medical orthodoxy rank him as the first occult doctor in literature. Laura, the protagonist, narrates, beginning with her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle amid an extensive forest in Styria, where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire. When she was six, Laura had a vision of a beautiful visitor in her bedchamber. She later claims to have been punctured in her breast, although no wound was found. Twelve years later, Laura and her father are admiring the sunset in front of the castle when her father tells her of a letter from his friend, General Spielsdorf. The General was supposed to bring his niece, Bertha Rheinfeldt, to visit the two, but the niece suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. The General ambiguously concludes that he will discuss the circumstances in detail when they meet later. Laura, saddened by the loss of a potential friend, longs for a companion. A carriage accident outside Laura's home unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura's age into the family's care. Her name is Carmilla. Both girls instantly recognize the other from the "dream" they both had when they were young. Carmilla appears injured after her carriage accident, but her mysterious mother informs Laura's father that her journey is urgent and cannot be delayed. She arranges to leave her daughter with Laura and her father until she can return in three months. Before she leaves, she sternly notes that her daughter will not disclose any information whatsoever about her family, past, or herself, and that Carmilla is of sound mind. Laura comments that this information seems needless to say, and her father laughs it off.

A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, the Le Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, deprived of their ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but, owing to their possessing influential relatives at the court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed to quit their country for England, unmolested, with their personal property. We meet with John Le Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu de Cresseron, as cavalry officers in William the Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a member of the King's staff that he was presented with William's portrait from his master's own hand. He afterwards served as a major of dragoons under Marlborough.

The foremost teller of scary stories in his day and a profound influence on both the novelists and filmmakers of the 20th century, Anglo-Irish author JOSEPH THOMAS SHERIDAN LE FANU (1814–1873) has, sadly, fallen out of scholarly and popular favor, and unfairly so. To this day, contemporary readers who happen across his works praise his talent for weaving a tense literary atmosphere tinged by the supernatural and bolstered by hints of ambiguous magic. First published in 1864, Uncle Silas, one of his more famous works, is a macabre tale of the death-haunted mansion known as Knowl, and Maud Ruthyn, who narrates for us the ominous goings-on there through her curtain of obsession with the dark and the dead. Considered by some to be among the best horror novels ever written, this is certainly a pinnacle of Victorian suspense that continues to grip sophisticated readers today. With a series of new editions of Le Fanu’s works, Cosimo is proud to reintroduce modern book lovers to the writings of the early master of suspense fiction who pioneered the concept of “psychological horror.”