Fanu Joseph
Список книг автора Fanu JosephCheckmate - The Original Classic Edition
J. Sheridan Le Fanus lesser known novel, Checkmate, involves self-interest, dishonesty, deception, revenge, and murder. Sir Reginald Arden, worried by mortgages on Mortlake Hall, is arranging marriage of his daughter Alice, unbeknownst to her, to Lord Wynderbroke, a middle-aged, wealthy peer. Some time previously Sir Reginald had ostracized his fiery, proud, spendthrift son Richard, but nonetheless he temporarily recruits his sons efforts in disguising the family discord from Lord Wynderbroke. Richard sees advantages to himself if Alice marries Wynderbroke, and discredits Mr. Longcluse, a recently arrived wealthy gentleman that has been showing romantic interest in Alice. Meanwhile, we readers are puzzled by Mr. Longcluses relationship with a French citizen, a Monsieur Lebas, who is unexpectedly murdered in a betting parlor. The plot is further complicated by a murder that occurred some twenty years previously. Harry, a brother of Sir Reginald, was robbed and murdered outside Mortlake Hall. And so goes the early chapters. <p> The atmosphere is not as dark and threatening as in Le Fanus highly popular Uncle Silas, but early on there is a vague concern that something is not quite right. A gentleman of apparently good credentials is ultimately revealed to be a formidable, highly wicked man; his meticulous steps to achieve revenge are reminiscent of a carefully played game of chess. The solution to this Victorian mystery is perhaps a little farfetched as it involves rather fanciful surgical techniques practiced by an unethical Prussian doctor. <p> Checkmate (1871) is a good example of the sensation novel, a genre popular in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s. The Victorian public was accustom to Gothic tales involving adultery, theft, kidnapping, insanity, bigamy, forgery, seduction and murder. However, the sensation novels authored by Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Le Fanu, and others were considered particularly shocking because these crimes take place not in fictionalized Gothic locales, but in familiar Victorian domestic settings. <p> As editor and owner of the Dublin University magazine, J. Sheridan Le Fanus literary influence was substantial, but following his death in 1873 his works faded into obscurity. Fortunately for the modern reader, M. R. James, a scholar of medieval manuscripts and a writer of ghost stories himself, helped restored Le Fanus reputation by editing and reprinting (in 1923) Le Fanus Madam Crowls Ghost and Other Stories. Today, Le Fanus short stories and novels are all available in reprint editions. Some have become television screenplays.
Carmilla - The Original Classic Edition
J. Sheridan LeFanus Carmilla stands as one of the richest, most literate and most enduring stories in the history of the vampire sub-genre. Many rate it higher than Bram Stokers Dracula, and while that estimation is at least debatable, there is no debate that Carmilla has exerted a mighty influence, consciously or not, on most vampire fiction to follow in its wake, Dracula not excepted. Indeed, Stokers original early chapter in his masterpiece, later published independently as Draculas Guest, is particularly indebted to LeFanus earlier work. As to which is better, let each reader decide for himself–and so enjoy them both! <p> The story is deceptively simple. A young girl, shaken up in a carriage accident, is left by her traveling mother in the care of the narrators father. Laura, the young woman in whose voice we are told the tale, becomes fast friends with her new acquaintance, a friendship that is put to a powerful test when a strange malady begins infesting the idyllic Styrian countryside with nightmares, fever, and death. <p> LeFanus style is unhurried, intelligent, and subtle, and the result is an eminently readable tale of mystery and the macabre that holds up remarkably well to repeated perusals. Though not as famous as Dracula, and certainly written on a much smaller scale than Stokers epic vampire opus, Carmilla is the more sustained and concentrated of the two. Many have traditionally argued that the novella, or short novel, is the ideal vehicle for a horror story, allowing for plenty of characterization and plot development without pushing the story itself beyond its dramtic limits. This reviewer tends to agree, and asserts that whereas Dracula, masterwork that it is, often flags and succumbs to the doldrums, Carmilla never wavers and holds interest to the bittersweet end. <p> Originally published in 1871, Carmilla was quite sensational in its day, but I know many will not judge it to have aged well. A far cry from many modern vampire tales, Carmilla is probably not for everyone, or even every vampire fan. The deliberate pace, old-world feel, delicate characterization, subtlety, and relative brevity of the story may be turn-offs to those who expect page after page of gory action and explicit sex from their horror. Be that as it may, discerning readers will find few indulgences better than LeFanus Carmilla, a gothic triumph which will endure as long as vampire tales are read.