LIFE:

He spends his youth in Chapelizod, at the periphery of Dublin, and Abington, in county Limerick, living in close contact with a rural society poor but proud and imbued with superstitions. In 1832 he begins to study at Trinity College where he takes degree in Jurisprudence. He publishes some tales on the "Dublin University Magazine" (The Ghost and the Bone-setter, The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh and Schalken the Painter). He writes two historical novels set in England inspired by Walter Scott and the short collection Ghost Stories and Tales of Mistery, 1851. In 1844 marries Susan Bennett who will die 14 years after driving Le Fanu to lose every interest in social life until being defined "The Invisible Prince". Shortly before his death he publishes the tales collections Chronicles of Golden Friars, 1871 and In a Glass Darkly, 1872.
The Purcell Papers and Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mistery that collect tales published only on magazines, are published posthumous.
Le Fanu gained his reputation especially for tales (his historical novels never had large fortune), in which he is inspired by the numerous local traditions, that stir ancient pagan reminiscences with Christian venerations; He narrates of restless phantoms in solitary castles, of fairies, gnomes and leprechauns who live in forests and kidnap children; of bewitches animals and fantastic creatures who lay traps in woods.

SUGGESTED WORKS:

Carmilla, 1871 Carmilla, 1871 It's one of his most famous work, and it is inspired by many ghost story's writers starting with Bram Stoker. The story narrates of an ambiguous and alarming woman-vampire, personage of singular fascination, finely erotic. For being better able to characterise this personage, Le Fanu did a scrupulous examination of sources analysing the Central European traditions that gave depth to the personage of the dead-live blood drinker and that will inspire the writers to come. This story is inserted in the collection In a Glass Darkly, in which there are other four stories that have as underlying theme the investigations of an esoterist-doctor, Doctor Hesselius, who tackles the cases examining them with analytical spirit and splitting the supernatural by the ordinaries implications.

OTHER WORKS:

The Purcell Papers, 1880
Published posthumous, this tales collection is introduced like a series of reports of unusual vicissitudes collected by an ecclesiastic: it narrates of fairies, gnomes and bewitched beasts that still, although the passage of the centuries, intrude upon life of men.

Uncle Silas, 1864
The only novel worthy to be mentioned, is one of the most chilling psychological thriller that was ever written, and it's placed, for constructive technique and mystery taste, at the origins of detective literature.

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