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: #42501 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

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

Customer Reviews

The best of le Fanu
This is a collection of uncommon merit, and readers will no doubt enjoy such stories as 'Mr Justice Harbottle' quite as much as the renowned vampire tale 'Carmilla'. But to those unfamiliar with the fourth story, 'The Room in the Dragon Volant' one can only say that this haunting, plangent masterpiece is likely to be the most memorable of all. This book contains the best of le Fanu's tales, better than 'Madame Crowl's Ghost', and represents the apogee of Victorian ghostly fiction.

read on...
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.