The Purcell Papers — Volume 1

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic literature, journalist and newspaper proprietor. Le Fanu is considered by literary critics to be among the greatest ghost story writers of the Victorian era, as several of his works were central to the development of the genre. He was the author of Gothic short stories and macabre poems, novels such as Uncle Silas (1864), and the collection of five stories In a Glass Darkly (1872), in which the novella Carmilla (1872) is significant as a foundational work of vampire literature.