 Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, born on 28 August 1814, was an Irish writer most famous for his Gothic tales and mystery novels, most notably Uncle Silas, Carmilla and The House by the Churchyard.
Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to the Royal Hibernian Military School in the Phoenix Park with his family a year after his birth.
He studied law at Trinity College and in 1839 was called to the bar, but he didn’t practice and soon abandoned law for journalism, writing his first stories for the Dublin University Magazine. He submitted his first ghost story, “The Ghost and the Bone-Setter”, to this magazine.
While his writing career expanded into many genres Le Fanu remains best known for his mystery and horror fiction, both which used tone and effect rather than “shock horror” to leave an impression on the audience. Much of his work is also based on his previous stories, which he would refine and expand on.
The first novels Le Fanu wrote were historical fiction, including The Cock and Anchor and The House by the Churchyard, the latter of which was an important influence on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
Through the mid1860s to the early 1870s Le Fanu also wrote a number of sensation novels in the style of Wilkie Collins, including Wylder’s Hand (1864), A Lost Name (1868) and The Rose and the Key (1871).
He died in 1873, aged 58, in Dublin. He now has a road and Park in Ballyfermot, near his childhood home in south-west Dublin, named after him. [edit]
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