Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #728691 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 467 pages

Synopsis
A compilation of the Victorian master's classic tales of horror reveals his ability to depict the supernatural.

Customer Reviews

Very Pleasing
LeFanu is one of the top-tier ghost-story writers. Although M.R. James reigns supreme over that particular domain, LeFanu is one of its princes (as is Oliver Onions, though I don't believe that the same can be said for the curiously overrated H.P. Lovecraft). This particular collection will be a joy to any and all enamored of classic ghost stories -- despite unmistakable redundancies and Lefanu's fondness for excessively oratund language.

As fine a collection of ghost stories as thy pound could possibly buy
To my reckoning, only M.R. James can rightfully claim the share the thrown held by Sheridan Le Fanu for pure chilling of the spine across such a prolonged period. Many a ghostly inclined author has their odd classic, but James and Le Fanu scare consistently and to maximum effect. For my money though, Le Fanu has the edge...

Including all the ghost stories (but not the adventure story) from 'In a Glass Darkly', this volume also adds most of the best stories from 'Madam Crowls Ghost and Other Stories'. There is a lot of variation here. Le Fanu isn't concerned so much with haunted houses, but haunted people and the effect that being haunted has on a person. The tales are often strange, making great use of folklore which is never explained, so there's a lot of reading in between the lines that you have to do, and it's from there that the scares frequently occur.

The best story of the lot is Schalken The Painter, which tells of a painter whose love, Rose Velderkaust, is wedded to some evil chappy by her Uncle for money. She escapes, and finds her way home in a state of hysteria and rambling about the dead not being one. Notable is that her bride's limbs were seemingly `guided and directed by a spirit unused to the management of bodily machinery'. Where she vanishes to, why, and what exactly is the significance of the rippling water is never explained. It's the not knowing that makes these tales so frightening. There's a lot of psycho-sexual stuff going on in the ghost story genre, but what raises Le Fanu above his peers, including M.R. James, is that he seems to be totally in command of it. He knew EXACTLY what he was on about when he wrote lesbian vampire romp Carmilla, and it's his accute awareness and mastery of his material that makes him a true genius.

Of course, mastery of plot and subtext would be far less interesting without Le Fanu's mastery of prose. For atmosphere, he is a sheer craftsman, but he doesn't spend pages lingering on surroundings like Radcliffe. His wording is a joy to read, devoid of the disgusting monosyllablism that constitutes most modern literature and he doesn't patronise you with annoyingly short sentences either. He represents all the heights of Victorian literature without any of the sentimentalist shortcomings.

The illustrations are an added bonus, but even without them I'd have no reservation in commending the book as one of my favourite reads. If you buy this and M.R. James' 'Collected Ghost Stories', you have the best that the horror genre has to offer.