Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu fut un auteur irlandais de premier plan, spécialisé dans les récits gothiques et les romans policiers du dix-neuvième siècle. Son œuvre fut centrale dans le développement du genre des histoires de fantômes à l'époque victorienne. Décrit comme appartenant au "premier rang" des écrivains d'histoires de fantômes, Le Fanu créa avec maestria des récits pleins de suspense et de surnaturel. Son approche unique de la narration et de l'atmosphère a laissé une marque significative dans le genre.
A nobleman strikes an agreement he will soon regret. A drunk man receives a startling vision of life after death. A struggling painter's apprentice falls in love with his master's niece, only to see her given in marriage to an older, wealthier man. Mysterious and Horrific Stories is a collection of Gothic tales by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1865.
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary.