(1814-1873)
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814 into a well-educated
Irish family of Huguenot extraction, connected by marriage to that of the
playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
He was educated by his father, a clergyman, by private tutors, and then
at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the bar in 1839, but he never
practiced and soon abandoned law for journalism. He contributed ballads,
stories and verse to the Dublin University Magazine and in 1861
became its editor and proprietor, developing it from a student publication
into a significant European title.
After the death of his wife in 1858, he withdrew from society becoming
known as the "Invisible Prince". He became something of a recluse and devoted
himself to his writing.
At this time, he was becoming increasingly pessimistic about life in general
and the course of Irish politics in particular. He seems to have focused
on the negative aspects of his own life to write some of the great supernatural
horror tales of the period.
Although a best-selling author for more than twenty years, Le Fanu's reputation
drifted into almost a century of obscurity, although he had as fans such
writers as Henry James and Dorothy Sayers. A major reason for this neglect
by the literary elite seems to be the subject of his writing, since for
many decades the great majority of literary critics held supernatural horror
fiction in disdain.
He died on February 7, 1873.
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