Sheridan Le Fanu



Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (24 August, 1814 – 7 February, 1873) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer and journalist, now mainly remembered for his ghost stories and his mystery novel Uncle Silas.

Uncle Silas (1864)

 * There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.
 * Ch. 21


 * "The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."
 * Ch. 47


 * How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long – the care of cares – the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven – and straight you find a new stratum there.
 * Ch. 53


 * There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
 * Conclusion

Criticism

 * He has attained supremacy in one particular line: he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer.
 * M. R. James "The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu" (1923).