Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75063 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

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 the Author
Robert Tracy has also edited The Macdermots of Ballycloran and Nina Balatka & Linda Tressel for the World's Classics.

Customer Reviews

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This is a superb collection. Green tea is probably the least good but still good. The Familiar is a great tale of a man haunted by his past and eventually destroyed by it. Mr Justice Harbottle is very endearing and one of my favourite ghost stories. The Room in The Dragon Volant is long but well worth it - what could have been the perfect crime, if only...Carmilla, the vampire tale, is to my mind superior to Stoker's overlong Dracula, and was its inspiration.

An Apt Title.
Whatever the merits of Le Fanu's collection of short stories, the Wordsworth edition is dismal.

The typesetting errors are so frequent that it was only after some investigation that I began to believe that mine is not a bootlegged copy. The most common faults are wandering sem;i-colons, and all exclamation marks replaced with a space followed by a personal pronoun I this can cause confusion when placed in the middle of a sentence, as Le Fanu's old prose does not include capital letters following an exclamation mark.

Undoubtedly cheap, but only really worth it as an excercise in deciphering.

Five of Le Fanu's longer short stories
'In a Glass Darkly' is a collection of hair-raising tales selected from those recorded by Dr Martin Hesselius during the many years he spent working to understand and explain the seemingly supernatural incidents that came to his attention. The stories are:

1) 'Green Tea' - a clergyman believes himself persecuted by a malevolent monkey.

2) 'The Familiar' - an ex-naval captain is threatened by an aggrieved ghost from his past.

3) 'Mr Justice Harbottle' - a respectable gentleman is driven from his lodgings by the activity of a mean old judge who has been dead for some years.

4) 'The Room in Le Dragon Volant' - a rich English man on tour becomes enmeshed in an extraordinary scam whilst travelling from Brussels to Paris.

5) 'Carmilla' - the daughter of an English father, living in a schloss in Styria, is befriended by a young lady who has unusually needle-sharp teeth.

As Henry James quite rightly suggested, Le Fanu's stories are the ideal reading material after the chimes of midnight. These five stories provide a wonderful chill before snuggling down to sleep. They are longer than the tales in Le Fanu's 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' collection, where the stories are between 10 and 25 pages in length. The tales in this collection vary in length between about 30 and 100 pages.

I recommend 'In a Glass Darkly' to anyone who enjoys old-fashioned ghost stories.