The Green Book 25 - J Sheridan Le Fanu Rarities

  

Swan River Press have just announced the latest issue of their journal The Green Book, Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, and this time it is devoted to J Sheridan Le Fanu, offering several rarities by and about him. 

These include a rediscovered monograph memoir of the author written by his publisher, and introduced by Jim Rockhill, and an essay by Martin Voracek about a 1942 German language sequel to 'Green Tea'. There is also a completely overlooked poem by Le Fanu, and an essay by him on Chapelizod, together with a note by Albert Power about the author's association with this quarter of Dublin. Jim Rockhill also writes on 'False Ghosts and Spurious Le Fanu'. 

As ever, The Green Book is essential for any reader or scholar interested in Irish literature or the literature of the fantastic.

A Century of Madam Crowl’s Ghost -- by Jim Rockhill

 LeFanu, portrait by his son

Although most of his novels were properly attributed upon publication between hardcovers[i] within a year of their serialization, only a few of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s many short stories and novellas were credited to him upon his death on 7 February 1873,  leaving the majority languishing anonymously in a variety of magazines. 

Until his friend Arthur Perceval Graves (1846-1933) gathered thirteen pieces from the Dublin University Magazine [D.U.M.] as The Purcell Papers (London: Richard Bentley) in 1880, and followed that up with The Poems of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (London: Downey & Co.) in 1896, the only works of less than novel length by Le Fanu known to the public were “The Haunted Baronet” and two other Chronicles of Golden Friars (London: Richard Bentley, 1871), “The Dead Sexton” in Across the Bridge (the Christmas Number of Once a Week, December 1871), the five longish tales of In a Glass Darkly (London: Richard Bentley, 1872), and “Dickon the Devil” (London Society, Christmas 1872).

George Brinsley Le Fanu (1855-1935) sent the story fragment “Hyacinth O’Toole” to Temple Bar in 1884, and illustrated a few editions of his father’s work during his association with the London publisher Edmund Downey (1856-1937), but his reprinting of previously unattributed works is limited to “The Watcher” in (The Watcher and Other Weird Stories, 1894),[ii] The Cock and Anchor and The Evil Guest (both 1895).

This situation began to change in 1916 when S[tewart] M[arsh] Ellis (1845-1933) published the first bibliography of Le Fanu’s work in The Irish Book Lover (Vol. VIII, Nos. 3-4, October-November 1916, pp. 30-33) to complement his illustrated essay “Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu” in The Bookman (Volume 51, No. 301, October 1916,  pp. 15-21), an essay he later reworked for inclusion in Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1931). Ellis lists not only the novels, stories, and verse previously known, citing both serialization and book publication, but also journalism, and—mirabile dictu—the first acknowledgement of the author’s first collection, Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (Dublin: James McGlashan, 1851), “Some Account of the Latter Days of Sir Richard Marston, of Dunoran” D.U.M., April-June 1848), “The Mysterious Lodger” (D.U.M.,. January-February 1850), and “Ghost Stories of Chapelizod” (D.U.M., January 1851).

This laid the groundwork for M[ontague] R[hodes] James (1862-1936) to search the wide field of Victorian publications in full antiquarian mode for further specimens of Le Fanu’s work:  

stories which have not been reprinted or collected up to the present time . . . are only discoverable by research, and research of this particular kind into the files of more or less forgotten periodicals of the sixties and early seventies is not very easily carried out. I am convinced that I have missed some stories; yet I have done a good deal of ransacking, as occasion offered

This worthy endeavour yielded Madam Crowl’s Ghost, and Other Tales of Mystery (London: G. Bell), published one hundred years ago this month: November 1923. Here at last was not only a fuller and more detailed list of the author’s works gleaned through careful reading and comparison of who knows how many hundred pages of Victorian magazines and other ephemera, and an assessment of Le Fanu as novelist and story-teller. From the D.U.M. he identifies four hitherto unattributed stories, one more from Temple Bar, and six from All the Year Round. 

Dust-wrapper to the Oct 1925 Cheap Ed.

Better still, he offers a generous sampling of the stories he and Ellis had recovered. And what stories they are! In addition to rescuing the title story embedded in the short novel “A Strange Adventure in the Life of Miss Laura Mildmay” in Chronicles of Golden Friars, James reprints the known but difficult to obtain “Dickon the Devil”, and ten other stories fully exploring Le Fanu’s range from the grotesquely comical—“Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House in Aungier Street” (D.U.M., December 1853) and “Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling” (D.U.M., April 1864), to tragedy focusing on the dynamics in folkloric—“The Child that Went with the Fairies” (All the Year Round, 5 February 1870) —historical “Ultor de Lacy” (D.U.M., December 1861)  and  family settings—“Squire Toby’s Will” (Temple Bar, January 1868).

James concludes the note that precedes the list of stories he has discovered with the statement, “Some one will, I hope, supplement my list. It is offered here, with all faults.” Further discoveries have been made since the publication of Madam Crowl’s Ghost, and Other Tales of Mystery, up to W. J. Mc Cormack’s (1947- ) uncovering of “Spalatro” and “Borrhomeo the Astrologer” in “Sheridan Le Fanu and the Authorship of Anonymous Fiction in The Dublin University Magazine” (Long Room 14-15, 1976-1977, pp. 32-36). Some of these finds have stood the test of time, others have proven doubtful[iii], and at least one[iv] was an outright fabrication; but one hundred years later this volume’s evidence of James’s devotion to the man he deemed “absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories” remains exemplary in its combination of scholarship, taste, and sheer diligence. 

(Jim Rockhill) 

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[i] His first two novels between hardcovers, The Cock and Anchor – Being a Chronicle of Old Dublin (Dublin: William Curry, 1845) and The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O’Brien – A Tale of the Wars of King James (Dublin: James McGlashan, 1847) also premiered anonymously, though they were later published as Le Fanu’s works by Downey & Co. in 1895 and 1896 respectively. I have addressed the complicated story behind the suspected Le Fanu novel first identified by W. J. Mc Cormack, Loved and Lost (D.U.M., September 1868 – May 1869), and the Anonymous The Story of My Love (London: Richard Bentley, 1869) in my introduction to S. T. Joshi’s reprint edition of Loved and Lost for Sarnath Press (2021).

[ii] First published in the D.U.M. (November 1847), but by this time many readers would have been familiar with the later version published in In a Glass Darkly. Cock and Anchor and The Evil Guest would also have been somewhat familiar, since Le Fanu had revised the first novel as Morley Court (London: Chapman & Hall, 1873) and the second as A Lost Name (London: Richard Bentley, 1868). 

[iii] The most frustrating and seemingly inextinguishable of these relates to the American edition of A Stable for Nightmares (New York: New Amsterdam Book Co, 1896), which emblazons Le Fanu’s name on the cover, even though it contains only one story by Le Fanu, and attempts to clarify that on the title page by stating it also contains stories by Sir Charles Young, Bart., and (in much smaller print) others. None of the stories are identified by author, though the book begins with Le Fanu’s “Dickon the Devil” and ends with Fitz-James O’Brien’s “What Was It?”. All the stories but one, which must be the work of Sir Charles Young, traveled overseas from the first British edition from Tinsley Brothers in 1868, which also fails to identify its authors.

[iv] “The Churchyard Yew” appeared in the July 1947 issue of Weird Tales as the work of “J. SHERIDAN LeFANU” was a pastiche by August Derleth (1909-1971), a hoax he perpetuated in Night’s Yawning Peal (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House-Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1952) and the Arkham House edition of The Purcell Papers (1975), though a posthumous note on the first page of the story in the latter volume admits the deception.

RIP Gary William Crawford (1953-2020)

Critic, poet, fiction writer, and small press publisher Gary William Crawford passed away in his native  Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 9th, at the age of 67, after a long illness.

Gary published some six booklets of poetry, including Poems of the Divided Self (1992); In Shadow Lands (1998); The Shadow City (2005); The Phantom World (2008); Voices from the Dark: Selected Poems 1979-2009 (2009); and, in collaboration with Bruce Boston, Notes from the Shadow City (2012).

He also published two booklets of his own short fiction, Gothic Fevers (2000) and Mysteries of Von Domarus, and Other Stories (2006).

He was probably best known as a critic and publisher.  He founded Gothic Press in 1979, and edited six issues of the magazine Gothic (1979-1987), which featured criticism as well as fiction and poetry.  (Galad Elflandsson's notable story "The Exile" first appeared in issue 2 in 1979.) A listing of the contents of the six issues can be found here.  Another magazine, Supernatural Poetry, began in 1987, but apparently lasted only for one issue. From 1992 through 1997 he published fourteen issues of Night Songs, another dark poetry magazine.


Of his nonfiction, his work centered in particular on three authors, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Aickman, and Ramsey Campbell.

His massive J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography appeared from Greenwood Press in 1985. With Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers he co-edited the seminal collection of Le Fanu criticism, Reflections in a Glass Darkly (2011). And with Brian J. Showers he issued an updated booklet covering Le Fanu's writings as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: A Concise Bibliography (2011).  In 2006 he founded and edited a twice-yearly online journal Le Fanu Studies.

A booklet-sized study Robert Aickman: An Introduction appeared in 2003. And he edited a booklet of three essays on Aickman, Insufficient Answers (2012). (The three essays are by Philip Challinor, Rebekah Memel Brown, and Isaac Land.) In 2011 he started an online Robert Aickman: A Database, which in 2014 expanded to include a twice-yearly online journal, Aickman Studies.

Ramsey Campbell (1988) was a Starmont Reader's Guide to the author.  Gary's last book was a collection of essays he edited, Ramsey Campbell: Critical Essays on the Modern Master of Horror (2014).  

Other booklets of especial interest published by Gothic Press include poetry collections by Bruce Boston, Conditions of Sentient Life (1996) and Cold Tomorrows (1998); Black Prometheus: A Critical Study of Karl Edward Wagner (2007), edited by Benjamin Szumskyj;  and (apparently the final Gothic Press chapbook) Unburying the Past: The Hermeneutics of Truth in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Novels (2015), by Claudio Di Vaio.

After Gary's increasing health problems, the Le Fanu and Aickman online databases and journals went offline sometime in 2016 or 2017. Some materials can still be found via the Wayback Machine, e.g. for Le Fanu here, or for Aickman here.  He also worked on a larger critical book on Aickman but this was never completed.

He also wrote articles on  Walter de la Mare, Fritz Leiber, and Stephen King, and contributed to various reference books, like Jack Sullivan's Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) and Marshall B. Tymn's Horror Literature (1981). 

Guest Post: Uncle Silas (1968) Location, by Gavin Selerie

I recently watched the version of Uncle Silas directed by Alan Cooke for TV (Mystery & Imagination series, 1968). I thought I hadn't seen it before but recognized in particular the performance by Patience Collier as Madame de la Rougierre, who conveys a twisted humour within menace. I now think I did see this at the National Film Theatre (BFI) years ago. It's quite an impressive version, though not as detailed as the more famous TV one with Peter O'Toole and Jane Lapotaire. Cooke plays up the melodrama but the central performance by Robert Eddison is superb and the atmosphere is well sustained throughout. Lucy Fleming as Maud displays a convincing innocence and naivety turning into horrified awareness. I note that the IMDB entry lacks any information about the location where it was filmed. I think there can be little doubt that at least the exterior and some of the internal scenes were shot at Horsley Towers in Surrey. This was the home counties residence of Earl and Lady (Ada) Lovelace. The arch which the carriage drives through from the courtyard and the lake in front of the Italian tower (east side) are unmistakeable. The rows of gothic windows seem to be further evidence that the Lovelace dwelling is the base site. I think the main staircase was  also used, although some further decorative detail may have been added. Finally, use is made of the Great Hall, with balcony or gallery. Perhaps some of the architecture was recreated in the studio, although it may well have been cheaper to film the entire thing on location. Interestingly, Horsley Towers was also used as the exterior location for The Stone Tape, a landmark of TV drama with script by Nigel Kneale, although in that case much less of the site is evident.

I visited Horsley Towers earlier this year, so my memory of the building and grounds is fresh. A poem I wrote afterwards, simply called 'Horsley Towers', appears in my recently published Collected Sonnets (Shearsman Books), which also features two outtakes from Le Fanu's Ghost, 'Stalking Grove' and 'Peep into a Whiskey-shop'.

 Gavin Selerie

Le Fanu and Herbert van Thal

I was recently reading Herbert van Thal’s interesting autobiography, The Tops of the Mulberry Trees (1971), which covers many of van Thal’s roles in publishing—as an agent, anthologist, editor and publisher.  Here are a few paragraphs on J. Sheridan Le Fanu:

An author to whom I have always been greatly addicted is Sheridan Le Fanu. It was that remarkable person A.J.A. Symons who first drew my attention to him. I have always been surprised that Le Fanu has never achieved the popularity of his contemporaries, such as Wilkie Collins, though Collins’ reputation rests solely on The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and of whom I am no less of an admirer. Le Fanu is barely known save for Uncle Silas, and some of his short stories from In a Glass Darkly. A. J. A. Symons had a remarkable collection of his works and now that the Sadleir collection is no longer in this country, his works are one of the scarcest to be found. I began collecting his books late in life, and therefore was unable to complete a run of volumes. Those I had I regret now I sold at Sotheby’s in 1964.

Ardizzone's frontispiece to In a Glass Darkly

Peter Davies had the good ides of republishing In a Glass Darkly with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone, but as usual, the result was not so admirable financially. I have always felt that it is a pity that the marriage between illustrator and novelist is no longer popular. I suppose everyone has a preconceived idea in their minds’ eye as to the appearance of the characters in their favoured writings, and prefer not to have this dispelled by an artist’s view. I, however, do not agree with this argument. I always see Alice through Tenniel, Pickwick thought Boz, and I felt similarly Edward Ardizzone completely captured the spirit of Le Fanu, and I only wish that had In a Glass Darkly been a success we could have continued to republish Le Fanu with that artist’s illustrations.

When I had my own publishing house, I naturally wanted to republish Le Fanu, but I only republished one short story from The Purcell Papers—A Strange Adventure in the Life of Miss Laura Mildmay.  Montague Summers reproved me for not stating that the story first appears in Cassell’s Magazine Volume IV, 1868, and not in The Purcell Papers. The Le Fanu of Spook Sonatas no loner terrifies—the host, the familiar and the vampire only hold court in the world of the cinema—and in its place something far more realistically horrid is necessary to titillate the flesh of the toughened and permissive young of our time.

The small Le Fanu volume that van Thal published, A Strange Adventure of the Life of Miss Laura Mildmay: A Tale from Chronicles of Golden Friars (London:  Home and van Thal, 1947) included an introductory note by van Thal and a frontispiece by Felix Kelly.  Van Thal also included Le Fanu’s “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street” in his anthology Great Ghost Stories (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1960), and introduced a reissue of Le Fanu’s novel, The Cock and the Anchor (London:  Cassell, 1967).  

A sample page-spread from In a Glass Darkly (1929)

Edward Ardizzone contributed over 150 illustrations to the Peter Davies edition of In a Glass Darkly, published in November 1929.  Only six of these are full-page illustration; the rest are smaller vignettes.  All are rather impressionistic ink sketches.  I find I can’t agree with van Thal that Ardizzone is especially desirable as an illustrator for Le Fanu’s writings, nice and atmospheric as those the illustrations may be.

Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Gary William Crawford, Brian J. Showers, and I submitted the full, final text for this compilation to Hippocampus Press last week and should have the book in print later this Summer or Fall. Jason Van Hollander will be doing the cover illustration. Contents are as follows:

Preface – W. J. Mc Cormack

Introduction – The Editors

Acknowledgements

I. SOME NOTES ON BIOGRAPHY

A Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Alfred Perceval Graves

Anecdotes from Seventy Years of Irish Life – W. R. Le Fanu

Extracts from Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others – S. M. Ellis

The Portraits of Le Fanu – Jim Rockhill, Brian J. Showers and Douglas A. Anderson

A Void Which Cannot Be Filled Up: The Obituaries of J. S. Le Fanu – Brian J. Showers

II. GENERAL STUDIES

M. R. James on J. S. Le Fanu – M. R. James

Forgotten Creator of Ghosts—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Possible Inspirer of the Brontës –Edna Kenton

Sheridan Le Fanu – E. F. Benson

From The Supernatural in Fiction – Peter Penzoldt

An Irish Ghost – V. S. Pritchett

“Prologue” and “Epilogue” to Madam Crowl’s Ghost – M. R. James

Doubles, Shadows, Sedan-Chairs, and the Past: “The Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu” – Patricia Coughlan

III. SOME SPECIAL TOPICS

Making Light in the Shadow Box: The Artistry of Le Fanu – Kel Roop

Le Fanu’s House by the Marketplace – Wayne Hall

Sheridan Le Fanu and the Spirit of 1798 – Albert Power

H. P. Lovecraft’s Response to the Work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Jim Rockhill

“A Regular Contributor”: Le Fanu’s Short Stories, All the Year Round, and the Influence of Dickens – Simon Cooke

A Shared Vision: Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr – Gary William Crawford

Dreyer, Vampyr and Sheridan Le Fanu – Mark Le Fanu

IV. CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS

Contemporary Reviews of the Publications of J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Compiled by the Editors

V. STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS

“Green Tea”: The Archetypal Ghost Story – Jack Sullivan

“Introduction” to The House by the Churchyard – Elizabeth Bowen

Three Ghost Stories: “The Judge’s House”, “Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House on Aungier Street”, and “Mr. Justice Harbottle” – Carol A. Senf

“Introduction” to Uncle Silas – M. R. James

Conversations in a Shadowed Room: The Blank Spaces in “Green Tea” – John Langan

“Introduction” to Uncle Silas – Elizabeth Bowen

“Addicted to the Supernatural”: Spiritualism and Self-Satire in Le Fanu’s All in the Dark – Stephen Carver

In the Name of the Mother: Perverse Maternity in “Carmilla” – Jarlath Killeen

Crossing Boundaries, Mixing Genres in The Wyvern Mystery – Sally C. Harris

“I resolved to play the part of a good Samaritan”: Metafiction in “The Room in the Dragon Volant” – William Hughes

“The Child that Went with the Faeries”: The Folk Tale and the Ghost Story – Peter Bell

The Smashed Looking Glass: Fragmentation and Narrative Perversity in Willing to Die – Victor Sage

Bibliography

Sources

Biographical Notes

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Extra kudos are due Brian - The Keeper of the Text - for bearing the brunt of the typing, keeping track of the word count, and channeling the various revisions for this endeavor.

Jim