This volume contains two of LeFanu's stories: A Chapter in the History of the Tyrone Family (a story which may have been an inspiration for Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre) and The Murdered Cousin (the earliest "sealed room" mystery known.) Although not well known today, LeFanu was a favorite of writers like Bram Stoker and M.R. James, who considered LeFanu to be one of the best supernatural writers of the time. His prose is vivid and detailed and his horror relies on effect and mood, rather than on gore or shock value. Victorian hosts would often place a book of LeFanu's stories by their guests' bedsides, for their reading pleasure late at night.
Author Biography
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 - 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was a leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M. R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories." Three of his best-known works are Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard.
