An exploration of the work of Victorian Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

This book considers the fiction of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) in material and cultural contexts of the early to mid-Victorian period in Ireland. Aoife Mary Dempsey shows how Le Fanu’s longstanding relationship with the Dublin University Magazine, a popular literary and political journal, must be seen as a crucial context for the examination of his work. She considers Le Fanu’s fiction as part of a wider surge of supernatural, historical, and antiquarian activity by Irish Protestants in the period following the 1801 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. In light of Le Fanu’s habit of writing and rewriting stories, a practice that has engendered much confusion and consternation, Dempsey compares posthumous collections of Le Fanu’s work with original publications, demonstrating the importance of these material and cultural contexts. This book reveals new critical readings of some of Le Fanu’s best-known fiction, while also casting light on some of his regrettably overlooked work through recontextualization.