Tag: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love edited by Joanne Ella Parsons – #ReadIndies

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This new short story collection, Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love, is part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. These books have been around for a few years now but I’ve let them pass me by as I’ve had enough to read with their Crime Classics series! I’m glad I’ve finally found time to try one as although this collection is a bit uneven I did find it entertaining.

The book contains twelve stories by different authors and includes an introduction by the editor, Joanne Ella Parsons. The stories were originally published between 1833 and 2022 and appear here in chronological order. All have a ‘doomed romance’ theme, with some being much darker than others. There are two that I’ve actually read before – one of them is Sheridan Le Fanu’s lesbian vampire novella, Carmilla, and the other is Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, also a vampire story, first published in The Bloody Chamber. I didn’t read Carmilla again as I just read it fairly recently, but I did re-read the Carter and was impressed again by the beautiful imagery and the atmospheric Gothic setting she creates.

The oldest story in the book is Mary Shelley’s The Invisible Girl, in which the narrator, out walking along the coast of Wales, finds a painting of a beautiful woman hanging on the wall inside a ruined tower. It was good to have the opportunity to try more of Shelley’s work, having only read Frankenstein so far, but I didn’t find this a particularly strong story. Two that I did enjoy were The Little Woman in Black by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and One Remained Behind by Marjorie Bowen. These are also authors I’ve read before; Braddon is a favourite Victorian author of mine and has a very readable writing style. Her story seemed as if it was heading in one direction, but then surprised me with an ending I wasn’t expecting at all! Bowen was a very prolific author of historical novels and supernatural tales – the story in this collection is a ghost story from 1936 and one of the highlights of the book for me.

Joanne Ella Parsons has clearly tried to include stories with a wide range of geographical settings, exploring different cultures, rather than just sticking with more traditional Gothic stories. Wilkie Collins, another Victorian author I usually enjoy, is represented here with Mr Captain and the Nymph, in which a ship’s captain lost on an unidentified Pacific island falls in love with the daughter of a local priest. It’s an interesting story, although not a good example of his best work. Alice Perrin’s The Tiger-Charm is set on safari in India, while Nalo Hopkinson’s The Glass Bottle Trick transposes the famous Bluebeard folktale to a Caribbean setting. The latter are two new authors for me and I found both stories entertaining, but I’m not sure if I would search out more of their work based on these.

Another highlight was Could You Wear My Eyes? by Kalamu ya Salaam, where a man whose wife has died agrees to have her eyes inserted into his face after her death, allowing him to see life from her perspective. It’s a strange story but a fascinating one! The collection is completed with another 19th century story, Ella D’Arcy’s White Magic, and two contemporary ones, I’ll Be Your Mirror by Tracy Fahey and Dancehall Devil by V. Castro.

Doomed Romances is a real mixed bag, then – there are some very strong stories and some much weaker ones, and including Carmilla seemed an odd decision to me, as it’s so much longer than any of the other stories and made the book feel unbalanced. I enjoyed the collection overall, though, and will probably consider reading more of them.

British Library Publishing publish a range of fiction and non-fiction including the Tales of the Weird, Crime Classics and Women Writers series. They are an independent publisher, so I’m counting this book towards #ReadIndies month, hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life.

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

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My first book for this year’s RIP challenge is Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic vampire novella, Carmilla. First published in 1872, it is thought to have influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which came more than twenty years later, and is one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction (although John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Byron’s Fragment of a Novel were written earlier still).

My previous experience with Le Fanu has been limited to his Victorian Gothic novel, Uncle Silas, and one of his short stories, Laura Silver Bell, both of which I read ten years ago. I’ve always intended to read more of his work, so when I saw Carmilla available through NetGalley (a new Deluxe Edition is being published by Pushkin Press this week) it seemed the perfect opportunity.

The story is narrated by nineteen-year-old Laura, who lives in a lonely castle in Styria, Austria, with only her father and governesses for company. Laura longs for a friend her own age and it seems she may get her wish when a young woman is injured in a carriage accident near the castle. Her name is Carmilla and her mother, who is desperate to continue on her journey, asks Laura’s father to take care of her daughter until she returns. Laura is delighted to have Carmilla staying with them, but also feels uneasy, because she has seen Carmilla before – in a dream that has haunted her since her childhood.

As this is a very short book, if I say much more I will be giving away the entire plot – and anyway, as I’ve already said that this is a vampire novel, you can probably guess what Carmilla really is and how the rest of the story will unfold. For the modern day reader there are no big surprises here, although I’m sure that at the time when it was published, as one of the first of its kind, it would have felt much more original and shocking. However, there are still plenty of things that make this book an entertaining and worthwhile read.

First of all, it’s interesting to read Carmilla while keeping in mind its place in history and its influence on later vampire fiction – there are some very obvious similarities with Dracula and Anne Rice has cited it as an inspiration for her Vampire Chronicles. It can also be read as an early example of a lesbian romance; although the constraints of 19th century fiction prevent Le Fanu from being too explicit, the relationship between Laura and Carmilla is clearly based upon physical attraction and we learn that Carmilla always chooses young women as her prey. Finally, with its sinister atmosphere, remote castle setting and other elements of classic Gothic literature, it’s the perfect choice if you’re taking part in the RIP event or just looking for something dark and spooky to read as we head towards Halloween!

Thanks to Pushkin Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 1 read for R.I.P XVI

Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu

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Until now my only previous experience of the 19th century Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was the short story, Laura Silver Bell, which I read for Mel U’s Irish Short Story Week in March. I was keen to see what I would think of one of Le Fanu’s full-length novels and decided to read Uncle Silas for the R.I.P challenge.

Uncle Silas is an 1864 novel which seems to incorporate almost every aspect of the Victorian sensation/gothic novel you can think of: gloomy, eerie mansions, graveyards, laudanum addiction, an evil governess, locked rooms and locked cabinets, poison, family secrets. I had high hopes for the book as it sounded like exactly the type of classic I usually enjoy, and after a slow start it didn’t disappoint.

Our heroine (and the narrator of the story) is Maud Ruthyn who lives with her father at Knowl, their family estate. Maud is fascinated by a portrait of her Uncle Silas which hangs on one of the walls inside the house – she has never met her uncle before and is intrigued by hints of scandal in his past. When Mr Ruthyn decides to find a governess for his daughter, the sinister Madame de la Rougierre comes to live at Knowl and a chain of events begins which will finally bring Maud into contact with her mysterious Uncle Silas.

And that’s really all I can tell you about the plot without beginning to give too much away! I had managed to avoid reading any big spoilers so I never had any idea what was coming next, and I think that was the best way to approach this book.

It did take me a while to really get into the story. It was fun and entertaining from the beginning and I was never actually bored with it, but it seemed to take such a long time before anything really happened. It wasn’t until about one hundred and fifty pages into the book that the pace began to pick up and then I could appreciate why Le Fanu had taken his time building the suspense and slowly creating a mood of menace and foreboding. It was a very atmospheric and creepy story (particularly any scene featuring Madame de la Rougierre, who must be one of the most horrible, grotesque villains in literature), though I didn’t find it as scary as I had expected to.

Maud may not be the strongest of female characters but she felt real and believable to me. Although she could be brave when she needed to be, she was young and naïve and I felt genuinely worried for her as she found herself becoming increasingly isolated, not sure who she could and couldn’t trust. And for me, this was where the story could be described as frightening: the complete lack of control Maud had over her own destiny and the way she was forced to depend on people who may not have had her best interests at heart.

If you enjoyed The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins then I think there’s a good chance you’ll like this book too. It doesn’t have as many surprising twists and turns as The Woman in White but it is a similar type of book, though with a much darker and more gothic feel. I think it’s a shame Le Fanu isn’t as widely read as other Victorian authors, as his work is definitely worth reading. I hope you’ll decide to give this book a try if you haven’t already.

Laura Silver Bell by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Short Story Week)

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This week (14-20 March) Mel U of The Reading Life is hosting an Irish Short Story Week. If you’d like to participate all you need to do is read at least one short story by an Irish author. There are plenty of these available to read for free online, including stories by classic authors such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Bram Stoker.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to try a short story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu is probably most famous for his vampire novella, Carmilla, and gothic novel Uncle Silas, but has also written a lot of shorter fiction. As I’m not familiar with his short stories at all, I chose one at random from The Literature Network.

Laura Silver Bell is a simple but effective story. It is set in the north of England, in an isolated rural area. Laura Lew, known as Laura Silver Bell, has been raised as a farmer’s daughter after the death of her mother.

So Farmer Lew called the little girl Laura; and her sobriquet of “Silver Bell” was derived from a tiny silver bell, once gilt, which was found among her poor mother’s little treasures after her death, and which the child wore on a ribbon round her neck.

When Laura falls in love with a tall man dressed in black whom she meets while walking home one night, she receives a warning from Mother Carke, a former sage femme (midwife) who is believed to be a witch. Mother Carke suspects that the man is a fairy and she advises Laura to stay away from him. But will Laura take her advice or will she be tempted to go with the fairy – and what will happen to her if she does?

“Say yer prayers, lass; I can’t help ye,” says the old woman darkly. “If ye gaa wi’ the people, ye’ll never come back. Ye munna talk wi’ them, nor eat wi’ them, nor drink wi’ them, nor tak a pin’s-worth by way o’ gift fra them – mark weel what I say – or ye’re lost!”

Although this is not a horror story exactly, it does have quite an eerie atmosphere, due to the lonely setting and the grounding in traditional folklore – there are frequent references to fairies, witchcraft and black magic (fairies, in this sense, are not the pretty winged creatures that are often depicted in modern culture, but something more sinister). It seems that Le Fanu had a particular interest in the legends of humans being stolen away by fairies – after reading this story I read another one by the same author called The Child that Went with the Fairies which, as the title suggests, is on the same theme as Laura Silver Bell.

Have you read this story or anything else by Le Fanu? Which of his stories or novels would you recommend I read next?