Reflections in a Glass Darkly

REFLECTIONS IN A GLASS DARKLY: ESSAYS ON J. SHERIDAN LE FANU

Edited by Gary William Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers
Forward by W. J. Mc Cormack
Cover by Jason Van Hollander

Hippocampus Press, December 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61498-005-6 (paperback)

Nominated for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award in the Non-Fiction category.

Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) is one of the leading weird writers of the nineteenth century, the author of "Green Tea", "Carmilla", Uncle Silas, and other classic works. In this volume, the first collection of essays about Le Fanu, three distringuished scholars have amassed a welath of material o every aspect of the author's life, work, and influence. A biographical section features memoirs of Le Fanu along with reproductions of many portraits of the author. Early reviews of his many books are reprinted, as is important early criticism by M.R. James, E.F. Benson, V.S. Pritchett, and others. Recent essays by Jack Sullivan, John Langan, Victor Sage, and many others discuss a wide array of topics relating to Le Fanu's writing. Nine of these essays are printed here for the first time. All in all, this book provides a definitive guide to the weird fiction of Le Fanu.

Gary William Crawford is a widely published poet, scholar, and fiction writer, and compiler of a bibliography of Le Fanu. Jim Rockhill is the editor of the complete supernatural fiction of Le Fanu. Brian J. Showers is a fiction writer and literary historian, and the co-compiler (with Gary William Crawford) of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: A Concise Bibliography. Together they edit the online scholarly journal Le Fanu Studies.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD
- W. J. Mc Cormack

INTRODUCTION
- Gary William Crawford, Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers

I. SOME NOTES ON BIOGRAPHY

The Dictionary of National Biography
- C. Litton Falkiner

A Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
- Alfred Perceval Graves

Excerpt from Seventy Years of Irish Life
- William Le Fanu

Anecdotes from Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others
- S. M. Ellis

The Portraits of Le Fanu
- Jim Rockhill, Brian J. Showers and Douglas A. Anderson

A Void Which Cannot Be Filled Up: The Obituaries of J. S. Le Fanu
- Brian J. Showers

II. GENERAL STUDIES

From The Supernatural in Fiction
- Peter Penzoldt

M. R. James on J. S. Le Fanu
- M. R. James

Sheridan Le Fanu
- E. F. Benson

An Irish Ghost
- V. S. Pritchett

"Prologue" and "Epilogue" to Madam Crowl's Ghost
- M. R. James

Doubles, Shadows, Sedan-Chairs, and the Past: "The Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu"
- Patricia Coughlan

III. SOME SPECIAL TOPICS

Making Light in the Shadow Box: The Artistry of Le Fanu
- Kel Roop

Le Fanu's House by the Marketplace
- Wayne Hall

Sheridan Le Fanu and the Spirit of 1798
- Albert Power

H. P. Lovecraft's Response to the Work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
- Jim Rockhill

"A Regular Contributor": Le Fanu's Short Stories, All the Year Round, and the Influence of Dickens
- Simon Cooke

A Shared Vision: Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly and Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr
- Gary W. Crawford

Vampyr's Ghosts and Demons
- Mark Le Fanu

IV. CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

V. STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS

"Green Tea": The Archetypal Ghost Story
- Jack Sullivan

Forgotten Creator of Ghosts — Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Possible Inspirer of the Brontës
- Edna Kenton

"Introduction" to The House by the Church-yard
- Elizabeth Bowen

Three Ghost Stories: "The Judge’s House", "Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House on Aungier Street", and "Mr. Justice Harbottle"
- Carol A. Senf

"Introduction" to Uncle Silas
- M. R. James

Conversations in a Shadowed Room: The Blank Spaces in "Green Tea"
- John Langan

"Introduction to Uncle Silas
- Elizabeth Bowen

"Addicted to the Supernatural": Spiritualism and Self-Satire in Le Fanu's All in the Dark
- Stephen Carver

In the Name of the Mother: Perverse Maternity in "Carmilla"
- Jarlath Killeen

Crossing Boundaries, Mixing Genres in The Wyvern Mysteries
- Sally C. Harris

"I resolved to play the part of a good Samaritan": Metafiction in J. S. Le Fanu's "The Room in the Dragon Volant"
- William Hughes

The Child that Went with the Faeries
- Peter Bell

The Smashed Looking Glass: Fragmentation and Narrative Perversity in Willing to Die
- Victor Sage