In a Glass Darkly (Pocket Classics S.)

by SheridanLeFanu (Author)

• Used

  Mass Market Paperback
  1987

  $4.89

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.36

  Le Fanu was facinated by the occult, and his writings draw on the gothic tradition, Irish folklore and the social and political anxieites of his Anglo-Irish contemporaries. In exploring sometimes inexplicable terrors, his tales focus on the unease of those who encounter the supernatural rather than on the origin or purpose of the visitant. The five stories presented here were collected by Dr Hesselius, a metaphysical doctor, the forerunner of the modern psychiatrist, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates the atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. The stories are Green Tea , The Familiar , Mr Justice Harbottle , The Room in the Dragon Volant , and Carmilla .

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $8.05

  With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was one of the great masters of Victorian of mystery and horror fiction, and can be regarded as the father of the modern ghost story. In a Glass Darkly (1872), one of his most celebrated volumes, purports to be the casebook of Dr Hesselius, a pioneer psychologist. These five tales represent some of Le Fanu's most accomplished work, which rises above the staid conventions of the age. Although drawing on Gothic conventions - the book features both ghosts and vampires - Le Fanu redefined the parameters of supernatural fiction. He had little interest in the crude depiction of other worldly phenomena in order to provide the reader with a pleasurable frisson of fear. Le Fanu concern rather lay in the examination of the results of supernatural experience on the psyche of his protagonist, in this he paved the way for the work of Henry James and M. R. James. This volume is an indispensable cornerstone of modern horror and remains one of the finest collections of unsettling fiction in the language.