W. J. McCormack - Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland

C ERTAIN T ECHNICAL difficulties confront the would-be biographer of Sheridan Le Fanu, which it may be useful to admit at the outset of this study. First, there is the problem of approaching a figure who, one hundred years after his death, has never attracted serious attention. The principal printed sources of information on his life are his brothers Seventy Years of Irish Life and his nephews Memoir of the Le Fanu Family, in neither of which does the novelist receive any especial notice. Second, there is the absence of a reliable bibliography of Le Fanus writings. Though I have attempted to remedy this deficiency in two appendices, the task of compiling a comprehensive listing of his periodical publications, and of collating the serial fiction and three-decker novels, remains for the future. Finally, surviving manuscript material is scarce and includes very little of literaryas distinct from biographicalinterest. The surviving correspondence, which provides a mass of minor details of Le Fanus life, unfortunately falls into clearly defined periods which leave much of his life unrecorded.

The absence of a Le Fanu bibliography has created a problem in choosing a text for quotation. From a cursory inspection of Uncle Silas, it is evident that the novelist tidied up his magazine text before passing it on to the publisher of the three-decker. Yet in many cases, Le Fanus proof-reading of the books was less careful than of the serial, perhaps because he was also editor and proprietor of the magazine in which most of his fiction first appeared. For the general reader, copies of the three-decker and files of the Dublin University Magazine are equally inaccessible. In the following study the texts of the three-decker versions of the novels have been used, obvious misprints being corrected. For the stories in The Purcell Papers, the magazine texts is preferred, on the grounds that they were never collectively issued during Le Fanus lifetime. Modern reissues of the better-known In aGlass Darkly have appeared frequently, but without any editorial apparatus. E. F. Bleilers two anthologies, Best Ghost Stories ofJ. S. Le Fanu (New York, 1964) and J. S. Le Fanu: Ghost Storiesand Mysteries (New York, 1975), include thirty stories with brief commentaries, and while these collections are warmly recommended to the general reader, Bleilers eclectic choice of sources for his text renders them unsuitable for quotation.

For permission to quote from manuscripts and other copyright material in their care, I am grateful to the trustees, administrators, and officials of the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Library of Scotland, Bodleian Library, Swedenborg Society, National Library of Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, University College, Dublin, Public Record Office (Dublin), Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Representative Church Body, Royal Irish Academy, Registry of Deeds (Dublin), University of Illinois Library, New York Public Library, Houghton Library, and Pierpont Morgan Library. The staff of the Department of Older Printed Books and Special Collections at Trinity College, Dublin, and of the Leeds Library have provided services beyond the normal call of duty. Janet Woolley and Sally Croft typed my manuscript with efficiency and good humour.

Mrs Rachel Burrows, Dr Jean Laurie, and Mrs Susan Digby-Firth very kindly drew my attention to family records which included valuable sources of this study; each corresponded enthusiastically with me, shedding light on the obscurities of Victorian family history. I am happy to record my gratitude to them, and to add a special word of thanks to Mrs Digby-Firth for her advice on the Bennett Papers. But above all others, William Le Fanu and his wife Elizabeth have constantly encouraged me in writing this study, having placed their papers at my disposal and answered innumerable finicking questions. My debt to them must be expressed in terms of their great kindness and hospitality over the last six years. The portrait of Sheridan Le Fanu, as a novelist and as an individual soul, embodied in the following pages is exclusively my responsibility, but my task would have been impossible without the co-operation of the Le Fanu family. All manuscript material of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is quoted by kind permission of William Le Fanu.

W. J. McC ORMACK

School of English
The University of Leeds