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    Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
    Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
    Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
    Ebook54 pages50 minutes

    Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess

    By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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    About this ebook

    This early work by Sheridan Le Fanu was originally published in 1838. Born in Dublin in 1814, he came from a literary family of Huguenot origins; both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights,
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 21, 2015
    ISBN9781473377868
    Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess

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      Book preview

      Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

      Passage in the Secret History

      of an Irish Countess

      By

      Sheridan Le Fanu

      Copyright © 2012 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      Joseph Sheridan le Fanu

      PASSAGE IN THE SECRET HISTORY OF AN IRISH COUNTESS

      Joseph Sheridan le Fanu

      Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814. His was a literary family of Huguenot origins; both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights, and his niece Rhoda Broughton would go on to become a successful novelist. Le Fanu’s family lived in a variety of locations around rural Ireland during his youth – the folk superstitions of which are said to have left a deep impression on him – and were financially hard-hit by the agitations of the Tithe Wars. In 1833, not long after the death of his father, Le Fanu entered Trinity College, Dublin to study law. While there, he was elected Auditor of the College Historical Society, and between 1838 and 1840 published his first series of short stories, which were later collected as The Purcell Papers.

      Le Fanu was called to the bar in 1839, but he never practiced and soon abandoned law for journalism. During the 1840s, he married, and spent time mounting a protest against the indifference of the government to the Irish Famine. He also produced his first two novels - The C’ock and Anchor (1845) and The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O’Brien (1847); both works of historical fiction – and in 1851 he and his wife Susanna moved to their house on Merrion Square, Dublin, where le Fanu was to remain until his death. In 1858, Le Fanu’s wife Susanna died in unclear circumstances, and he became a recluse, setting to work in his most productive and successful years as a writer. Between 1864 and 1872, he produced ten novels, all in the ‘sensation fiction’ genre popular at the time.

      At his peak, le Fanu was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century, and he is now seen as central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. His work is credited with turning the Gothic’s focus from the external sources of horror to the inward effects of terror, thus helping to create the psychological basis for supernaturalist literature that continues to this day. Arguably le Fanu’s most enduring works are Uncle Silas, published in 1864, and the vampire novella Carmilla (1872), which influenced Bram Stoker in the writing of Dracula and has inspired several films. Le Fanu died in his native Dublin in 1873, at the age of 58.

      PASSAGE IN THE SECRET HISTORY OF AN IRISH COUNTESS

      Being a Fifth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh.

      -

      The following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much-regretted friend by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D----. She is no more--she long since died, a childless and a widowed wife, and, as her letter sadly predicts, none survive to whom the publication of this narrative can prove ‘injurious, or even painful.’ Strange! two powerful and wealthy families, that in which she was born, and that into which she had married, have ceased to be--they are utterly extinct.

      To those who know anything of the history of Irish families, as they were less than a century ago, the facts which immediately follow will at once suggest THE NAMES of the principal actors; and to others their publication would be useless-- to us, possibly, if not probably, injurious. I have, therefore, altered such of the names as might, if stated, get us into difficulty; others, belonging to minor characters in the strange story, I have left untouched.

      -

      My dear friend,--You have asked me to furnish you with a detail of

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