IN A GLASS DARKLY

Author: J. Sheridan LeFanu
Publisher: The Commercial Press
Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Sheridan LeFanu, a fellow author M. R. James, "stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories." A best-selling author from 1860 to 1880, LeFanu is celebrated today as a master of his art. In A Class Darkly is a remarkable collection of tales of the supernatural, in which the patients of Dr. Heselius are plagued by malignant apparitions and vampires, or are drugged into a state of living death. The good doctor can usually explain such phenomena in terms of psychopathology, but LeFanu seems deliberately ambiguous about the doctor's theories, and many disturbing implications remain unsolved. Each story exerts the compelling appeal of a thoroughly good yarn, but in A Class Darkly is a profoundly disorienting book that has become a classic of mystery and occult literature.