In A Glass Darkly (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) - Softcover

Le Fanu, Sheridan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840225521 ISBN 13: 9781840225525

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions, 2007

Synopsis

This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction by David Stuart Davies.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was one of the great masters of Victorian of mystery and horror fiction, and can be regarded as the father of the modern ghost story.

In a Glass Darkly (1872), one of his most celebrated volumes, purports to be the casebook of Dr Hesselius, a pioneer psychologist. These five tales represent some of Le Fanu's most accomplished work, which rises above the staid conventions of the age.

Although drawing on Gothic conventions - the book features both ghosts and vampires - Le Fanu redefined the parameters of supernatural fiction. He had little interest in the crude depiction of other worldly phenomena in order to provide the reader with a pleasurable frisson of fear. Le Fanu concern rather lay in the examination of the results of supernatural experience on the psyche of his protagonist, in this he paved the way for the work of Henry James and M. R. James.

This volume is an indispensable cornerstone of modern horror and remains one of the finest collections of unsettling fiction in the language.

About this title

Review:

'In a Glass Darkly, now published in the World Classics series, still makes for uneasy reading late at night.'Moy McCory, The Times Magazine

Synopsis:

Sheridan Le Fanu, wrote fellow author, M.R. James, 'stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories'. A best-selling author from 1860 to 1880, Le Fanu is feted today as a master of his art. "In a Glass Darkly" is a remarkable collection of tales of the supernatural, in which the patients of Dr Heselius are plagued by malignant apparitions and vampires, or are drugged into a state of living death. The good doctor can usually explain such phenomena in terms of psychopathology, but Le Fanu seems deliberately ambivalent about the doctor's theories, and many disturbing implications remain unsolved. Each story exerts the compelling appeal of a thoroughly good yarn, but "In a Glass Darkly" is a profoundly disorientating book that has become a classic of mystery and occult literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1840225521
• ISBN 13: 9781840225525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288