The very best of Le Fanu's supernatural fiction, including such classics as: 'Schalken the Painter', 'Squire Toby's Will', 'Mr Justice Harbottle', 'The Familiar', 'Green Tea', 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' and 'The Murdered Cousin', introduced by genre expert Michael Cox. 'Sheridan Le Fanu,' wrote S.M. Ellis in 1916, 'retains his own special place and fame as the Master of Horror and the Mysterious.' Today, Le Fanu's reputation is as high as ever amongst connoisseurs of supernatural and mystery fiction and well deserves the enthusiastic praise lavished on him by some of the most accomplished ghost fiction writers of the twentieth century - including E.F. Benson and M.R. James. Born in 1814, the son of an Anglo-Irish Protestant clergyman, Le Fanu single-handedly created a new kind of fictional ghost story. Gone are the sheeted spooks rattling rusty chains and the peripatetic headless ladies that infest Gothic fiction. In their place Le Fanu created formidably real supernatural presences that emerge from within, as well as invade from without. Le Fanu was the first writer to explore seriously the psychological dimensions of the ghost story; at the same time he was adept at invoking the physical presence of supernatural malevolence. The world in which his characters move is a hostile one, his stories surrounded by an infinity of outer darkness. Private anguish undoubtedly underlies these public fictions. And yet Le Fanu's stories - be they of ghosts or tales of mystery - are also of the good old-fashioned type, best enjoyed in the sort of setting he himself described - 'the old-fashioned parlour fire-side and its listening circle of excited faces, and, outside, the wintry blast and the moan of leafless boughs . . .'

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Uncle Silas (1864) is a macabre mystery novel and classic of gothic horror. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the premier ghost story writer of the nineteenth century. In his stories the supernatural explanation is implied, but there is always a remote but possible natural explanation. Maud Ruthyn, the heroine of this classic Victorian novel, recalls her fear of death, her moody father, the grotesque Madame de la Rougierre, and the suspicions surrounding her Uncle Silas. Uncle Silas is an extended adaptation of his earlier short story "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess," with the locale switched from Ireland to England.

A world of spirits, a locked cabinet, an abduction, past secrets that spill into the present combine to make Uncle Silas, Le Fanu's most celebrated novel of sensation. From the moment that Madame de la Rougierre is hired as governess to the young, naïve Maud Ruthyn, a dark cloud of foreboding hangs over the entire household. A liar, a bully and a spy, Madame eventually leaves, taking her dark secret with her.

But unhappily for Maud, that is not the last of Madame de la Rougierre. For when Maud is orphaned she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, her father's mysterious brother, a man with a scandalous - even murderous - past. Here she encounters Madame once more. This time her sinister role in Maud's destiny is all too clear.

With its subversion of reality and illusion and its depiction of the 'filmy layers' of Maud's passions and fears, Uncle Silas goes beyond the bounds of the conventional horror story to become a chilling psychological thriller.

This edition contains an introduction, chronology and explanatory notes.