General Studies
Adams, James Eli. A History of Victorian Literature. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Mentions Le Fanu, his appearances and later ownership of the Dublin University Magazine, and his
novel Uncle Silas as reflective of the Radcliffean Gothic.
Altner, Patricia. Vampire Readings: An Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press,
1998.
An annotated bibliography of vampire fiction that contains an entry on Le Fanu's "Carmilla."
Andriano, Joseph. Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemenology in Male Gothic Fiction. University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
The book contains a revised version of the essay in Contours of the Fantastic (see below). Andriano
argues that the "gender reversals in the vampire tale . . . reflect the confusion caused by the tension
between archetypal androgyny--the instinctive tendency to gust opposites--and stereotypical
dualism, the sociocultural tendency to polarize them." Concludes that Le Fanu was writing
obliquely about his own death.
Ascati, Maurizio. A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational. Houndsmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Studies the stories of In a Glass Darkly. Argues that they "reassert the existence of a superior justice
that works autonomously, without requiring any assistance from human agents."
Ashley, Leonard R.N. The Complete Book of Vampires. Barricade Books, 1998.
A study of the vampire in history, folklore, literature, and film. Briefly discusses Le Fanu's lesbian
vampire "Carmilla" and the films based on it.
Atherton, James S. The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in Finnegans Wake. New York:
Viking, 1960.
Studies the influence and allusions to Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard in James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake. The central incident, the "dirty deed" in Phoenix Park in Dublin is an echo of the
murder in Phoenix Park in Le Fanu's novel. Provides all of the allusions with commentary.
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Carmilla is the first vampire in English literature in which the vampire is a friend and lover.
Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982.
Le Fanu's Carmilla is like an angel turned demon. Carmilla's behavior "is more appropriate to
Swinburne's than to Dickens's divinities, but the loving and cruel Carmilla absorbs the power of
both."
Backus, Margot Gayle. The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish
Colonial Order. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
The narrator of Le Fanu's "Carmilla" "closely resembles the enclosed and isolated childhood of an
Anglo-Irish girl. Her family resembles an Anglo-Irish family in its internal dynamics, its
ambivalent relationship to the culture that surrounds it, and its economic raison d'etre."
Barkan, Elazar. Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism. Stanford
University Press, 1995.
Baugh, Albert C. A Literary History of England. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948.
Beresford, Matthew. From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth. London:
Reaktion Books, 2008.
A few pages of commentary note that in Le Fanu's "Carmilla," the vampire is depicted as a
charming, flesh and blood girl who seeks friendship and love. In short, the vampire is made to
seem human.
Berthin, Christine. Gothic Hauntings: Melancholy Crypts and Textual Ghosts. Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010.
Mentions Le Fanu's "Carmilla" at various points, discussing the words and letters bringing forth
the vampire from the text. Mentions the anagramatically variant names of Carmilla: Millarca and
Mircalla and Marcilla. Sees this as a textual play, and relates it to the unanagramatical name for
Stoker's Dracula.
Betz, Phyllis M. The Lesbian Fantastic: A Critical Study of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal and
Gothic Writings. Jefferson: McFarland, 2011.
"Explicit literary representations of the changing vision of same-sex desire between women during
the 19th and early 20th centuries were limited, but one text, Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872),
captured the complexities of the mainstream hesitancies regarding desire between women."
Bigazzi, Carlo. Studi Irlandesi. Reviewed in Irish University Review (22 March 2006). Reviewed by
Claudia Calavetta.
This review of this compendium of essays on Irish Literature especially mentions Maria Cristina
Misrandino's essay on Le Fanu's "The Familiar." Notes the anxiety that permeates the work.
Bloom, Clive. Gothic Histories: The Taste for Terror, 1764 to the Present. London: Continuum, 2010.
Briefly considers "Green Tea" as a tale of a diseased mind and Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr as
drawn from "Carmilla," but as a modernist film.
Bloom, Clive, ed. Gothic Horror: A Guide for Students and Readers. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007
In four essays in this book, Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and "Green Tea," are related to the larger Gothic
tradition.
Bondeson, Jan. Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. New York: W.W. Norton,
2002.
Notes the burial-alive in Le Fanu's "The Room in the Dragon Volant."
Bondeson, Jan. The London Monster: A Sanguinary Tale. University of Pennsylavania Press, 2000.
Bondeson, Jan. The Two-Headed Boy, and Other Medical Marvels. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2004.
Discusses a poem spoken by Madame de la Rougierre, the wicked governess of Uncle Silas. The
poem was probably written by Le Fanu himself. It metaphorically expresses the legend of "a
pig-faced noblewoman" that was current at the time Le Fanu wrote his novel. Notes this use of
metaphor is one of the most important elements of Le Fanu's works.
Bozzetto, Roger and Jean Marigny, eds. Vampires: Dracula et les Siens. Paris: Omnibus, 1997.
Brantlinger, Patrick, and William B. Thesing, eds. A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005.
In various essays on the sensation novel and the law, Le Fanu's The Rose and the Key and Uncle Silas
are mentioned as examples of those types of Victorian novels.
Butler, Erik. Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe,
1732-1933. Rochester: Camden House, 2010.
A good study of the vampire that discusses The Vampire Lovers, the Hammer film adaptation of
"Carmilla." Stresses that the film reinforces the patriarchal society against the subversive lesbian
vampire.
Cahalan, James M. Great Hatred, Little Room: The Irish Historical Novel. Syracuse University Press,
1983.
The published version of Cahalan's dissertation.
Carter, John, and Michael Sadleir. More Binding Variants. London: Constable, 1938.
A description of binding variants in editions of some of Le Fanu's books. Discussed here are The
House by the Churchyard, All in the Dark, and The Purcell Papers.
Castagna, Valentina. Shape Shifting Tales: Michele Roberts's Monstrous Women. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010.
Brief mention of Carmilla's capacity to change shape, but much of the material could be applied
more generally to the uncertainty of appearances in Le Fanu.
Castle, Terry. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993.
Mentions of Le Fanu and his lesbian vampire Carmilla figure in this study.
Castle, Terry. Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth Century English Culture and
Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.
Mentions the masquerade scene in Le Fanu's Carmilla in which the vampire selects her female
victim.
Cavaliero, Glen. The Supernatural in English Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Studies the supernatural tales and the mystery novels and stories to show that Le Fanu's work was
much more symbolic, like the works of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Notes the "surreal effects" of
Le Fanu's rhetoric.
Cavallaro, Dani. The Gothic Vision: Three Centuries of Horror, Terror and Fear. London: Continuum,
2002.
Notes the political relevance of Le Fanu's "Carmilla," which is "reinforced by its treatment of the
racial dimension: the vampire is an unequivocally foreign presence . . . and is taken to her
prospective victim's house by a 'hideous black woman with a sort of coloured turban on her head.'"
In this respect she is like a Le Fanuesque Anglo-Irish "other."
Chew, Samuel C., and Richard D. Altick. The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. 4 of ALiterary History
of England. Ed. Albert C. Baugh. London: Routledge, 2002.
Mentions Le Fanu's influence on Jane Eyre and Le Fanu as a sensation novelist comparable to
Wilkie Collins.
Clements, Susannah. The Vampire Defanged: How the Embodiment of Evil Became a Romantic Hero.
Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011.
A study of the contemporary vampire as depicted in the Twilight Saga and discusses its origins in
classic vampire fiction, such as Le Fanu's "Carmilla," and shows how such characters as Le Fanu's
female vampire presage the Romantic heroism of Edward in Twilight. An entertaining scholarly
study.
Coffman, Christine E. Insane Passions: Lesbianism and Psychosis in Literature and Film. Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
Studies the vampire in relation to lesbianism and notes Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and Coleridge's
"Christabel" in this connection. Mentions the "lesbian vampire film" at some length.
Cohen, Michael. Murder Most Fair: The Appeal of Mystery Fiction. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2000.
Mentions Le Fanu's Uncle Silas in connection with other sensation novels by Wilkie Collins and
Braddon.
Colavito, Jason. Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre. Jefferson,
NC: MacFarland, 2008.
A fairly good book that suffers from rather poor writing. Discusses "Carmilla," "Schalken the
Painter," "A Strange Adventure in Aungier Street," and "Green Tea." Compares "Carmilla" with
Polidori's "The Vampyre" and Varney, the Vampire, and Dracula and argues that it is much better in
execution than these others. Discussed Spiritualism in connection with "Green Tea" and the other
stories. On the whole, reasonably perceptive but could have benefited from better copy editing.
Collins, Jim. Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Discusses Dorothy L. Sayer's mystery novel Gaudy Night in which the main character is researching
Le Fanu's works. Acknowledges that Le Fanu is seminal in the development of mystery fiction.
Cook, Michael. Enclosure in Detective Fiction: The Locked Room Mystery. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Discusses Le Fanu's tale "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" and demonstrates that
it predates Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" in its use of the locked room mystery. Le Fanu may
well be the first author to use this plot device.
Copper, Basil. The Vampire: Legend, Fact, Art. New York: Citadel Press, 1993.
A rather superficial survey that mainly recounts the plot of "Carmilla."
Cornes, Judy. Madness and the Loss of Identity in Nineteenth Century Fiction. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2008.
Discusses the character of Madame de la Rougierre in Le Fanu's Uncle Silas as an example of the
mad Victorian female.
Cornwell, Neil. The Literary Fantastic. London: Wheatsheaf, 1990.
Studies "Schalken the Painter," "Green Tea," "Borrhomeo the Astrologer" and Uncle Silas in terms of
narrative point of view and implied reader positions, giving a rich rhetoric of implied
supernaturalism in which the ambiguities of rational and supernatural explanations are central.
Daly, Nicholas. Sensation and Modernity in the 1860s. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
A political and literary study that explores popular arts before the Reform Act of 1867. Contends
that writers attempted to capitalize on the mass market of new voters, separating popular culture
and high art. Le Fanu is mentioned briefly in four places, but the book can be used as a
background study for Le Fanu's sensation novels.
Darrow, Kathy D., ed. "Victorian Ghost Stories." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 220.
Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
A long and excellent section on the Victorian ghost story, reprinting excerpts from a number of
useful sources. Le Fanu mentions throughout.
Davenport-Hines, Richard. Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin. New York:
North Point Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998
Studies "Carmilla" in political terms as a tale of the displaced Anglo-Irish who are loosing their
importance in Ireland. Thus, Ireland is transposed to a province of Austria, where Laura, of
English descent, wastes away by a defunct aristocratic family, the Karnsteins. Finally, the
Karnstein family, like the Irish, are eradicated with the death of Carmilla Karnstein.
Davie, Donald. The Heyday of Sir Walter Scott. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.
Devotes a few pages to Le Fanu's historical novels and contends that they are not really historical
novels as much they are thrillers. Notes the macabre atmosphere Le Fanu creates. Davie
concludes, "The truth is, Le Fanu is only accidentally Irish. He inhabits from the first the private
country of the neurotic."
Davis, Paul E.H. From Castle Rackrent to Castle Dracula: Anglo-Irish Agrarian Fiction in the
Nineteenth-Century. University of Buckingham Press, 2011.
Le Fanu figures here in a minor way. Although Le Fanu is not an Irish Agrarian novelist, Uncle
Silas, The House by the Churchyard, and "Carmilla" influence Stoker's Dracula. Silas reflects Stoker's
vampire, as does Paul Dangerfield in The House by the Churchyard. Le Fanu's Madame de la
Rougierre and Carmilla bear upon Stoker as well. Sees Le Fanu as the "fantastic" element in the
nineteenth century Irish novel, leading to Stoker.
Day, William Patrick. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend
Most. University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
Briefly mentions Le Fanu's "Carmilla."
Deane, Seamus. Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997.
Briefly notes that Le Fanu does not internalize the Anglo-Irish experience into the Gothic as deeply
does Bram Stoker or James Clarence Mangan.
Dickerson, Vanessa D. Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide: Women Writers and the Supernatural.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
Le Fanu is mentioned briefly among male Victorian writers of ghost stories.
Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
A feminist study from a male point of view, regards Le Fanu's "Carmilla" as "the eternal animal in
woman, desperately struggling with the forces of civilization to reenter the body from which it has,
in the course of history, been expelled."
Donoghue, Emma. Inseperable: Desire Between Women in Literature. New York: Knopf, 2010.
A page is devoted to Le Fanu's vampire, noting sources in Coleridge and Diderot and influence on
Stoker. Remarks on the "lesbian vampire movie" that the novella spawned.
Dyer, Richard. The Culture of Queers. London: Routledge, 2002.
Notes that most lesbian vampire fiction is written by men. Cites Le Fanu's "Carmilla."
Eagleton, Terry. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture. London: Verso, 1995.
Discusses a number of Le Fanu's works from an Anglo-Irish perspective
Eagleton, Terry. Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1999.
In this study of nineteenth century Ireland and its intellectual and political elements, Le Fanu
figures briefly concerning his editorship of The Dublin University Magazine.
Fierobe, Claude. De Melmoth a Dracula, La Litterature fantastique irlandaise au XIXe siecle. Terre de
brume, 2000.
Flanders, Judith. The Invention of Murder. London: HarperPress, 2011.
Mentions Le Fanu several times in connection with the Victorian fascination with criminality and
the celebrated crimes of the time. Intriguingly suggests that the name of Sherlock Holmes may
have been borrowed from Le Fanu's Carmel Sherlock in A Lost Name.
Foster, Roy. Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History. London: Allen Lane/The
Penguin Press, 1993.
An excellent study of Irish and English history and writers. A chapter on Elizabeth Bowen notes
the influence of Le Fanu. In discussing Yeats and Le Fanu, notes that both read Swedenborg. Good
remarks on the connections between Le Fanu and these writers.
Frayling, Christopher. Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula. London: Faber, 1992.
An interesting book excepting fictional works and documents that led up to Stoker's Dracula.
Surprisingly, Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is mentioned in passing.
Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1976.
Mentions The House by the Churchyard and Uncle Silas as examples of the romance.
Garrison, Laurie. Science, Sexuality and Sensation Novels: Pleasures of the Senses. Palgrave Macmillan,
2011.
Mentions Le Fanu in connection with his niece Rhoda Broughton, as he published her first novel in
the Dublin University Magazine.
Gates, Barbara T. Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988.
Le Fanu's haunted suicides are tormented by phantoms who "seem to be aspects of the self
displaced and imagined as things or people outside the self."
Gelder, Ken. Reading the Vampire. London: Routledge, 1994.
A gender-based reading of Le Fanu's "Carmilla" which shows the dichotomy between the
patriarchal and matriarchal families. Ultimately, the men in Le Fanu's protagonist's life destroy the
mother figure of Carmilla and maintain their power. Notes the theme of doubling and the
ambivalent nature of sexuality as it is expressed in the tale.
Genet, Jacqueline. The Big House in Ireland. Barnes and Noble, 1991.
Gettmann, Royal A. A Victorian Publisher: A Study of the Bentley Papers. Cambridge University Press,
2010.
Gibson, Matthew. Dracula and the Eastern Question: British and French Vampire Narratives of the
Nineteenth Century Near East. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Argues that "Carmilla is heavily influenced by the politics of Middle Europe, and that Le Fanu,
rather than taking Styria simply as a fashionable location for a modern vampire story or as a mask
for Ireland, is commenting upon recent politics in the region itself, and the dangers of the
Ausgleich of 1867."
Gilbert, Pamela K. A Companion to Sensation Fiction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
A valuable book on the sensation novel, Le Fanu figures in essays by Anna Maria Jones and
Brittany Roberts, as well as brief mentions in other pieces. Jones's study of The House by the
Churchyard is very useful.
Girard, Gaid. Territoires de l'etrange dans las litterature irlandaise du XXe siecle. Rennes: PUR, 2009.
Glover, David. Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics of Popular Fiction.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Notes the influence of Le Fanu on Stoker's Dracula, especially on the deleted chapter from Stoker's
novel that was later published separately as a short story, "Dracula's Guest." Also notes the
Anglo-Irish background of Le Fanu's and Stoker's work.
Gordon, Joan and Veronica Hollinger, eds. Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary
Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
In this collection of essays on vampire fiction, Le Fanu is mentioned briefly throughout.
Gwynn, Stephen. Irish Books and Irish People. Bibliobazaar, 2007.
Mentions Le Fanu in connection with his older contemporaries, such as Samuel Lover, and remarks
that the dark Gothic strain in his work is unique in Anglo-Irish literature.
Haefele-Thomas, Ardel. Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity. Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2012.
A comparison of "Carmilla" to Frances Marryat's novel The Blood of the Vampire that points out
similarities and differences between the works. Asserts the Marryat read Le Fanu.
Haggerty, George E. Queer Gothic. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
Laura's childhood visitation by Carmilla in Le Fanu's novella is the prototype for the homoerotic
aspects of childhood fantasy later taken up by Henry James in "The Turn of the Screw."
Hall, Samuel Carter. Retrospect of a Long Life: from 1815-1883. London: Richard Bentley, 1883.
Hall, Wayne E. Dialogues in the Margin: A Study of the Dublin University Magaaine. Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1999.
Le Fanu used the Dublin University Magazine to further his literary aspirations. Using "the
conventions and commonplaces [of the Gothic], Le Fanu's characters expose the same ambivalence
and paralyzing uncertainties that haunted Ireland's Protestant ascendancy. . . . Le Fanu managed to
draw from them [the sensational novels] a psychological depth that makes his work seem in many
respects more modern than any other writer for the DUM.
Hallab, Mary Y. Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2009.
Le Fanu's protagonist, Laura, comes to a firm belief in vampires and the supernatural, which
Carmilla herself regards as natural.
Hammack, Brenda Mann. "Phantastica: The Chemically Inspired Intellectual in Occult Fiction."
Mosaic 37.1 (2004): 834.
Discuses the character of thd Rev.Mr. Jennings in "Green Tea."
Hand, Derek. A History of the Irish Novel. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
In Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard and Uncle Silas, Hand says, "Behind the facade of better
times and a happy community lurks the anxiety of the Anglo-Irish world's ability to conceive of
itself as a whole or a complete unity. Thus the emphasis on disconnection, disembodiment and
spectral haunting told through a rambling narrative towards the dilemma faced by the Anglo-Irish
characters in Elizabeth Bowen's fiction of the 1920s and 1930s."
Hansen, Jim. Terror and Irish Modernism: The Gothic Tradition from Burke to Beckett. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2009.
An excellent study of Le Fanu's "Carmilla" that places it against the background of
nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish history. The vampire Carmilla represents the perverse condition of
the Anglo-Irish ascendancy class and its eventual demise.
Harris, Jason Marc. Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. Aldershot,
Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008.
Discussses the strategies of rhetoric for applying superstition in folklore and the literature of the
supernatural. A chapter on Le Fanu discusses the folkloric tensions between class and racial
groups. "By paralleling class, economic, gender, and racial tensions with supernatural concepts in
folklore, Le Fanu not only expresses much of what was implicit in folk legends to begin with, but
shows the continued relevance of anxieties and mysteries that at first glance might seem antiquated
and picturesque superstitions." Based on Harris's dissertation.
Harrison, Kimberly, and Richard Fantina, eds. Victorian Sensations: Essays on Extravagant and
Unnatural Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006.
Hay, Simon. A History of the Modern British Ghost Story. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
A Marxist and Postcolonial study of the ghost story that studies "The Watcher" and "Green Tea" to
show how these ghost stories undermine or subvert the realist novel.
Hendershot, Cyndy. The Animal Within: Masculinity and the Gothic. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 1998.
Studies Le Fanu's "Green Tea" as a tale in which the protagonist's "confrontation with Darwinism as
an evil monkey is explored within the context of theological debates concerning Darwin's theory of
descent/evolution."
Heos, Bridget. Vampires in Literature. New York: Rosen, 2011.
A history of vampire literature for children. Competently done for its audience and discusses Le
Fanu's "Carmilla" briefly.
Holte, James Craig. Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1997.
Holtzendorff, Frida von. Das Zimmer im 'Fliegenden Drachen' aus den Aufzeichnungen des Dr. Hesselius.
Giessen Lindenstruth, 2008.
Howes, Marjorie. Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History. Dublin: Field Day Publications,
2006.
Uncle Silas "structures its representations of Anglo-Irish political anxieties as anxieties about the
construction of feminity and the regulation of female sexuality."
Hughes, Kathryn. The Victorian Governess. Hambledon Continuum, 1993.
Mentions the wicked governess, Madame de la Rougierre, in Le Fanu's Uncle Silas.
Hughes, William. Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Reader's Guide. London: Continuum, 2009.
Notes that "Carmilla" is often compared to Stoker's Dracula.
Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siecle.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is mentioned briefly.
Hutchins, Patricia. James Joyce's World. London: Methuen, 1957.
Mentions the Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu who was a nephew of Le Fanu and the small echoes of Le
Fanu in Finnegans Wake.
Indovino, Shaina Carmel. Dracula and Beyond: Famous Vampires and Werewolves in Literature and Film.
Broomall, Pensylvania: Mason Crest Publishers, 2011.
A very brief study of vampires in literature and film for teens. "Carmilla" is given a page of large
print in a chapter on the Gothic tradition.
Ingman, Heather. A History of the Irish Short Story. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Le Fanu figures largely here, from the early stories of The Purcell Papers to the sophisticated tales of
In a Glass Darkly. Summarises Le Fanu's achievement in depicting "the dissolution of the barriers
between the human world and the world of spirits. . . . allowing for both supernatural and
psychological explanations and, anticipating Yeats, mingling Swedenborg with Irish folklore."
James, Louis. The Victorian Novel. Oxford: Blackwell. 2006.
An overview of the Victorian novel that relates Le Fanu's Uncle Silas as an example of the popular
sensation novel. Also covers the Irish novel relating Le Fanu to Maturin as an Anglo-Irish Gothic
writer. Discusses the supernatural in such works as "Green Tea" and "Carmilla."
Jeffares, A. Norman. Anglo-Irish Literature. New York: Schocken Books, 1982.
Jones, Darryl. Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film. London: Arnold, 2002.
A good, fluid study of predominant horror themes. Moves easily through Le Fanu, the paranoia of
Uncle Silas and the lesbian vampire "Carmilla" in both the fiction and film adaptations. Jones
touches on only the Dreyer Vampyr and the Hammer Karnstein trilogy, but ignores other films such
as the British versions of Uncle Silas, one made after World War II and one a television film with
Peter O'Toole.
Jones, David J. Gothic Machine:Textualities, Pre-Cinematic Media and Film in Popular Visual Culture,
1670-1910. University of Wales Press, 2011.
Drawing from Jones's essay (written as David Annwn) in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror on
magic-lantern imagery of Le Fanu, shows how the phantasmagoria or magic-lantern show
influenced Le Fanu and how this imagery is related to the Gothicism of Le Fanu and his
contemporaries. Points out the sociological and psychological aspects of this imagery.
Joshi, S.T. Classics and Commercials: Some Notes on Horror Fiction. New York: Hippocampus Press,
2009.
In this collection of short pieces by Joshi on horror fiction, Le Fanu is mentioned briefly throughout.
Joshi, S.T., ed. Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares. 2 vols.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007.
A fascinating collection of essays about horror icons, such as ghosts, vampires, etc. and their
appearance in literature and film. Le Fanu is discussed or mentioned in several of the essays.
Joshi, S.T., and Rosemary Pardoe, eds. Warnimgs to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James.
New York: Hippocampus Press, 2007.
A book of essays on James that contain many references to Le Fanu, whose importance to M.R.
James is well-known.
Karg, Barb, Arjean Spaite, and Rick Sutherland. The Everything Vampire Book. Avon, MA: Adams
Media, 2009.
A popular compendium of the vampire in myth, history, literature and film. Rather hastily written
with errors and distortions. Reiterates much of the general knowledge about Le Fanu's Carmilla in
fiction and film.
Kelleher, Margaret. "Prose Writing and Drama in English, 1830-1890: From Catholic Emancipation
to the Fall of Parnell." The Cambridge History of Irish Literature. Volume 1: to 1890. Ed. Margaret
Kelleher and Philip O'Leary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
The legacy of the Williamite Wars "is a recurring concern throughout Le Fanu's fictional writings.
Discusses the early "Purcell Papers" and the two historical novels, The Cock a Anchor and The
Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien. Notes that The House by the Churchyard was the last of the Irish
novels. But cites the oft-mentioned description by Elizabeth Bowen of Uncle Silas as an Irish novel
in an English setting. Mentions the classic tales of In a Glass Darkly.
Kenney, Catherine. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press,
1990.
Notes in a number of instances, how Sayers looked back to the sensation novelists such as Le Fanu
and Collins and remarks how these early works transcend the plot of mystery and detection and
deal with larger issues in society. Sayers was trying to write more than a simple puzzle that must
be solved.
Khair, Tabish. The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere. Houndmills,
England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Shows a development of the Satan figure in Le Fanu's "Carmilla" from figure to a human quality in
which the primary interaction is approach and avoidance. There is also an attraction to and a
repulsion from a complex and believable vampire. Le Fanu's characters are fully realized, and this
shows how the vampire flourishes in Stoker's Dracula twenty-five years later.
Killeen, Jarlath. Gothic Ireland: Horror and the Irish Anglican Imagination in the Long Eighteenth Century.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005.
A study of Anglo-Irish history before the Irish Gothic of the nineteenth century. Mentions Le
Fanu's Uncle Silas and "Carmilla." " . . . the concerns of the pre-Gothic eighteenth century set the
basis for that which the nineteenth-century Gothic will examine . . . . an understanding of Temple,
Molyneux, King, Swift, Burke, Roche, and Edgeworth is a necessary prerequisite for understanding
Maturin, Le Fanu, Wilde and Stoker."
Killeen, Jarlath. History of the Gothic: Gothic Literature, 1825-1914. Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2009.
Studies "Green Tea," Uncle Silas, and "Carmilla" as "Irish Gothic" works. These "narratives suggest
the collapse of faith in authority and retreat to an occult space where a different kind of power can
be reconstituted." Hence, the "ghostly" character of the Anglo-Irish in the nineteenth century.
Kirschmann, Kris. Vampires in Literature. San Diego: Reference Point Press, 2011.
Written for teens, this very basic history of vampires in literature, unfortunately, makes errors. The
author writes mainly children's books.
Klemens, Elke. Dracula und "seine Tochter": die Vampirin als Symbol im Wandel der Zeit. Tubingen:
Narr, 2004.
Klinger, Leslie S., ed. The New Annotated Dracula. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
Notes the influence of Le Fanu's "Carmilla" on Stoker.
Knight, Mark, and Emma Mason. Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction. Oxford
University Press, 2006.
The irony of Le Fanu's "Green Tea" is that rather than undermining the supernatural by science,
science quantifies the supernatural in scientific terms.
Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction: 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Second Edition. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Le Fanu's mystery novel Checkmate is discussed briefly in regard to the humorous detective
depicted. Uncle Silas and Wylder's Hand are superior but have no detectives.
Kreilkamp, Vera. The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
Studies Uncle Silas and argues that the ruined or abandoned house reflects "a growing
confrontation with the insecure reality of postunion Protestant Ireland." Le Fanu's novel evokes an
"atmosphere of guilt and desolation, that disquieting sense of loss and cultural isolation
characteristic of nineteenth-century ascendancy fiction."
Latham, Rob. Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Briefly notes that the lesbianism of Le Fanu's lesbian vampire Carmilla is a motif carried over into
later vampire tales. Gay men and lesbians can identify with Le Fanu's famous character.
Leahy, Aoife. The Victorian Approach to Modernism in the Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers. Cambridge
Scholars, 2009.
Conveys Sayers's interest and respect for Le Fanu's work, as in her novels Gaudy Night and The Nine
Tailors, she works Le Fanu's works into the narrative.
Lengel, Edward G. The Irish through British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine Era. Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2002.
"Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's The Cock and Anchor: A Chronicle of Old Dublin City, a dark story of the
decline of the Anglo-Irish gentry, appeared in 1845, though it failed to attract the readership of his
later gothic horror stories."
Losey, Jay, and William D. Brewer. Mapping Male Sexuality: Nineteenth-Century England. Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2000.
Maison, Margaret M. The Victorian Vision: Studies in the Religious Novel. New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1962.
The sensation fiction of Le Fanu expresses an anti-Catholic view, as does the work of Wilkie
Collins.
Malchow, H. L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Universtiy Press, 1996.
Mentions Le Fanu's "Carmilla" in relation to Stoker's anxiety and fear of homosexuality. Stoker was
aware of Le Fanu's story, and its homosexual theme is implied in some of Stoker's fiction.
Malcolm, David. A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.
Le Fanu's place in Anglo-Irish literature is mentioned at several places.
Malton, Sara. Forgery in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fictions of Finance from Dickens to
Wilde. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Discusses the forgery theme in Le Fanu's "Mr. Justice Harbottle."
Marigny, Jean. The Vampire in the Literature of the Twentieth Century. Paris: Honore Champion, 2003.
Marigny, Jean. Vampires: Restless Creatures of the Night. Trans. Lory Frankel. New York: Abrams,
1994.
Notes that the Victorians considered homosexuality a crime, but in a fantastic work such as Le
Fanu's "Carmilla," lesbianism is camouflaged as a female vampire's bloodlust for her female
victim. This the crime was distanced and filtered through a work of fantasy.
Martin, Philip. A Guide to Fantasy Literature: Thoughts on Stories of Wonder and Enchantment.
Milwaukee: Crickhollow Books, 2009.
Quotes the vampire attack on Laura, which likens vampire Carmilla's transformation into a
monstrous cat and places it in the history of horror literature.
Mason, Diane. The Secret Vice: Masturbation in Victorian Fiction and Medical Culture. Manchester
University Press, 2008.
Mason remarks that "Carmilla" is "ostensibly" a supernatural tale. "The alleged dangers of
same-sex intimacy between women provides a compelling available medical context for the events
of "Carmilla," especially the eponymous character's relationship with Laura."
Matus, Jill L. Shock, Memory and the Unconscious in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge University Press,
2009.
Le Fanu is mentioned four times in this book, but not in the index. It can serve as a useful
background source for a study of Le Fanu's fiction.
Maunder, Andrew. Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation. London: Ashgate, 2004.
McCaw, Neil. Writing Irishness in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. London: Ashgate, 2004.
Le Fanu is cited as an Anglo-Irish writer of Gothic fiction, which was not considered an Irish
national literature.
McCormack, W.J. Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and
Bowen. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
The very finest discussion of the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg on Le Fanu. Discussions of
Uncle Silas and In a Glass Darkly show that "Le Fanu is concerned exclusively with the dark side of
the vision, with the revelations which follow death, the reinactments of crime and the confrontation
once again with one's victim." There is in Le Fanu "the loss of faith in systems, even in a system
which offered a virtual identity of language and reality."
McCormack, W.J. From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History. Cork,
Ireland: Cork University Press, 1994.
A revision of McCormack's 1985 study from Oxford Universty Press. Studies Le Fanu's Uncle Silas
and the ghost stories of In a Glass Darkly from the standpoint of Swedenborgian allegory. Argues
that in these works the dualities of the characters, indeed, their psychic "splits" show the anxiety of
the insular Anglo-Irish. Thus, Silas parallels the character of his brother, Austin Ruthyn. Silas is
often described as "ghostly" and in terms of "whiteness."
McCormack, W.J. The Pamphlet Debate on the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, 1797-1800.
Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996.
McNally, Raymond T. Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania.
McGraw-Hill, 1983.
McNally, Stephen, ed. In Search of the Absolute: Essays on Swedenborg and Literature. London:
Swedenborg House, 2004.
McNally's introduction mentions Swedenborg's influence on Le Fanu.
Melani, Sandro. L'eclissi del consueto: angeli, demoni e vampiri nell'imaginario vittoriano. Rome: Liguori.
Miles, Alfred Henry. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. Vol. 10. Routledge.
Montague, Charlotte. Vampires: From Dracula to Twilight. Eastbourne: Canary Press, 2010.
In a chapter on the Victorian vampire Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is discussed with a very basic approach
aimed at the young adult reader.
Moran, Maureen. Victorian Literature and Culture. London and New York: Continuum, 2006.
Discusses the Victorian Ghost Story and relates Le Fanu's psychological studies to Henry James in
The Turn of the Screw.
Morash, Christopher. Writing the Irish Famine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Notes Le Fanu's nihilism.
Moynahan, Julian. Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995.
Discusses Uncle Silas and the principal ghost stories to show that "there is significant interplay,
sometimes a willed confusion, between the idea of possession, by apparent demons and ghosts,
and the idea of dispossession, as in the loss of property, power, status."
Murphy, James H. Ireland: A Social, Cultural, and Literary History, 1791-1891. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2003.
Discusses Le Fanu from the standpoint of the Anglo-Irish. Notes that Le Fanu's historical novels,
his novels The House by the Churchyard and Uncle Silas may be read as the oft-discussed display of
the guilt of the Anglo-Irish. The tales of In a Glass Darkly also present this larger guilt in
metaphorical terms.
Murphy, James H. Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age. Oxford University Press, 2011.
An interesting and unique approach to Le Fanu utilizing many quotes from contemporary reviews
to show that Le Fanu was known as a sensation novelist and supernatural tale writer more than a
true Gothicist. Notes that the term Gothic was not applied to Le Fanu during his lifetime.
Nelson, Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2012.
Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is mentioned in a few places noting only the female lesbian vampire is an
important innovation.
Nolan, Emer. Catholic Emancipations: Irish Fiction from Thomas Moore to James Joyce. Syracuse
University Press, 2007.
Mentions Le Fanu briefly.
O'Malley, Patrick R. Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
An excellent discussion of the Protestant-Catholic, Irish-Anglo-Irish, and English-Austrian tropes
that suffuse Le Fanu's famous vampire novella. The perverse sexuality of the characters of the
Styrian Carmilla and the English-Styrian Laura show a nineteenth century Victorian culture that is
altered in its coming to terms with the dualities of its sexuality, its religion, and its politics--all of
which it attempts to suppress, and this suppression sets the stage for Stoker's vampire. Based on
his Harvard dissertation.
O'Neill, Patrick. Ireland and Germany: A Study in Literary Relations. New York: Peter Lang, 1985.
Oulton, Carolyn W. de la L. Romantic Friendship in Victorian Literature. London: Ashgate, 2007.
Compares the narrators of Dickens's David Copperfield with those of Le Fanu's "Carmilla." There
is a blurring and doubling of the narratives in the story. That is, Carmilla's own viewpoint comes
to the reader through her victim Laura, making it a complex emotional situation, very much like a
psychological case study. Hence, the framing narrative of Le Fanu's Dr. Hesselius.
Overstreet, Deborah Wilson. Not Your Mother's Vampire: Vampires in Young Adult Fiction. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is mentioned often. Also provides a breakdown and comparison of the
characteristics of major literary vampires from Polidori to Anne Rice.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New York:
Vintage, 1991.
In a study of Coleridge's "Christabel," Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is noted as inspired by the great poet.
Palmer, Paulina. Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions. London: Cassell, 1999.
A brief commentary, noting that Le Fanu presents his vampire Carmilla with unusual sensitivity.
In her love for Laura, Carmilla is accepting of herself has a homosexual vampire.
Panek, LeRoy Lad. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1987.
In a chapter on Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry Wood, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and other sensation
novelists, Le Fanu draws only one paragraph about Uncle Silas, and it comments on the
locked-room murder mystery in Le Fanu's novel. Remarks that Le Fanu is not as concerned about
the mystery as he is about "the pity and fear" that he evokes in his central character, Maud Ruthyn.
Patten, Eve. Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-century Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press,
2004.
A good background study for Le Fanu and his contemporaries. Le Fanu's activities with the Celtic
Athenaeum, a group organized to bring to light many important documents of Irish history.
Pechmann, Alexander. Der schwarze Vorhang unheimliche Kriminalsalle aus dem alten Irland.
Butjadingen Achilla-Presse, Verl.- Buchh., 2009.
Pedlar, Valerie. The Most Dreadful Visitation: Male Madness in Victorian Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2006.
"The psychology of The Rose and the Key is, as is usual in Le Fanu, complex, but it is clear that the
female victim of wrongful confinement in this text is being accused of insanity because of
behaviour that fails to satisfy a despotic and disturbed mother's standards of docility and
obedience."
Phillips-Summers, Diana. Vampires: A Bloodthirsty History in Art and Literature. Hod Hasharon,
Israel: Astrolog Publishing House, 2004.
A popular history of the vampire in folklore and literature that briefly discusses Le Fanu's
"Carmilla" as an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Pittock, Murray. Scottish and Irish Romanticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Sees characters like Le Fanu's Carmilla "as autochthonous manifestations of the female nation,
reaching out from their portraits and ruined castles to fascinate and destroy the expatriate English
in their midst, confined, as Laura is in the novella, by a sterile world of patriarchal rationality
where no young men are permitted because no continuation is possible."
Ponnau, Gwenhael. La Folie dans la Litterature Fantastique. Paris: University Press of France, 1997.
Powell, Anna. Psychoanalysis and Sovereignty in Popular Vampire Fictions. Lewiston, NY: Edwin
Mellen Press, 2003.
Studies sources for Le Fanu's vampire novella "Carmilla" in Coleridge's poem "Christabel." Notes
the implicit perversion in the Coleridge's fragment. Notes the perverse sexuality of Le Fanu's
novella and suggests that in a sense, the character Carmilla is both a mother and lover the character
Laura. Also discusses the three Hammer films based on Le Fanu's work; these three films are
often called "the Karnstein trilogy."
Powell, Anthony. Under Review: Further Writings on Writers, 1946-1990. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994.
Powell, Kersti Tarien. Irish Fiction: An Introduction. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Short but substantial commentary on The House by the Churchyard, Uncle Silas, and "Carmilla" that
emphasizes how these works reflect Le Fanu's sense of guilt and anxiety that the larger society of
the Anglo-Irish felt about their domination of the Irish.
Purchase, Sean. Key Concepts in Victorian Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
A section on sensation fiction mentions that The Rose and the Key deals with the wrongful placement
in a mental hospital, as does other sensation novels. Also mentions Uncle Silas.
Pykett, Lyn. The Sensational Novel: from "The Woman in White" to "The Moonstone." Plymouth:
Northcote House, 1991.
Radford, Andrew. Victorian Sensation Fiction. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
A good overview of scholarship on Le Fanu's sensation fiction that takes the stance of recent critics
such as Victor Sage, who argue that Le Fanu's work is a hybrid of a number of different elements.
A useful tool for scholars.
Rafroidi, Patrick. Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period (1789-1850). 2 vols. Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1972.
A thorough history of Irish literature with an extensive bibliography. Rafroidi attributes two
pieces in The Dublin University Magazine, "Evenings with the Witchfinders" and "Fireside Horrors for
Christmas," to Le Fanu. Also notes that Michael Sadleir attributes "Miscellanea Mystica" from the
DUM to Le Fanu. Le Fanu is mentioned throughout these volumes.
Ramsland, Katherine. The Science of Vampires. New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 2002.
A popular study of vampirism in lore, science, and literature, that notes that Le Fanu's vampire
scholar, Baron Vordenberg, presages later vampire scientists such as Stoker's Van Helsing.
Rance, Nicholas. Wilkie Collins and Other Sensation Novelists: Walking the Moral Hospital. Rutherford,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991.
Discusses Le Fanu's unwilling acceptance of his reputation as a sensation novelist, and remarks
that he was very different from Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. His preface to Uncle Silas is
shown as his defense for dealing with sensational subject matter. An excellent study of the
sensation novel and Le Fanu's participation in the movement.
Regan, Sally. The Vampire Book. New York: DK Publishing, 2009.
A paragraph is devoted to Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and one to Dreyer's film Vampyr. A beautifully
printed and lavishly illustrated book for the popular market.
Rickels, Laurence A. The Vampire Lectures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Studies Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and Carl Theodor Dreyer's film Vampyr as tales in which the young
girl, Laura, is haunted and vampirized by her dead mother. Carmilla and Dreyer's female
vampire drink the blood of the grieving girl to prepare her for death. Freud's comments on "taboo"
are brought into play.
Robinson, Sara Libby. Blood Will Tell: Vampires as Political Metaphors before World War I. Brighton,
MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011.
In this study of many very obscure vampire tales, the famous "Carmilla" occupies only four pages.
Relates it to Florence Marryatt's Blood of the Vampire.
Rowe, Katherine. Dead Hands: Fictions of Agency, Renaissance to Modern. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999.
Studies Le Fanu's "Ghost Stories of the Tiled House," which is imbedded in The House by the
Churchyard as a tale of servant master relations. Relates the tale to other stories of ghostly severed
hands, such as W. W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw" and W. F. Harvey's "The Beast with Five
Fingers."
Rzepka, Charles. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.
Erroneously asserts that Le Fanu's "Green Tea" predates Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" in the
use of the monkey as figure. Mentions Le Fanu's Uncle Silas as a Gothic style mystery novel of the
1860's. Notes the character of Paul Davies in Le Fanu's Checkmate as the type of cynical detective
of Le Fanu's day.
Sadleir, Michael. XIX Century Fiction, a Bibliographical Record Based on His Own Collection. London:
Constable, 1951.
A section on Le Fanu provides a detailed description on the Le Fanu items in Sadleir's own
collection.
Sayer, Katherine, and Rosemary Mitchell, eds. Victorian Gothic. Leeds, England: Leeds Center for
Victorian Studies, University of Leeds, 2003.
Schnepf, Chester H. The Protagonist's Dilemma in Poe and Le Fanu: The Emergence of the Gothic
Tradition. Waldeboro, Maine: Goose River Press, 2003.
A somewhat dated study based on Schnepf's thesis, argues that Poe and Le Fanu invented the
psychological Gothic tale later taken up by writers of twentieth-century horror tales.
Schoder, Angelika. Blutsaugerinnen und Femmes Fatales weibliche Vampire bei Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu und Bram Stoker. Diedorf Ubooks-Verl., 2009.
Showers, Brian J. Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin. Dublin: Nonsuch, 2006.
A well researched tour of the places in Dublin pertaining to Le Fanu. Maps, photographs, and
public records explore the Dublin in which Le Fanu lived. Contains useful biographical
information.
Silver, Anna Krugovoy. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
Le Fanu's character Carmilla brings about a condition in her victim Laura that is compared to
anorexia. Points out that Le Fanu's Carmilla and her victim, Laura, are doubles. "Carmilla and
Laura clearly represent evil and innocent goodness, a doubling that makes even more appropriate
an anorexic reading of the story."
Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Discusses Le Fanu's stories "The Child That Went With the Fairies" and "Laura Silver Bell" and
notes that both tales emphasize the terror engendered by them. Thus, they are linked to Le Fanu's
horror tales.
Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Norton, 1993.
Notes that Le Fanu's "Carmilla" established the homoerotic aspects of the vampire psychology.
Skal, David J. Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture. New York: Norton, 1998.
A brief mention of "Carmilla."
Skal, David J. Vampires: Encounters with the Undead. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2001.
Reprints Le Fanu's "Carmilla" with marginal running commentary about the novella with a reprint
of the anonymous tale "Wake Not the Dead" and film versions of Le Fanu's classic work.
Smajic, Srdjan. Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists: Theories of Vision in Victorian Literature and
Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Based on Smadjic's dissertation. See "Dissertations."
Smith, Andrew, and Diana Wallace. The Female Gothic: New Directions. Houndmills, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is mentioned in connection with Stoker and notes that Countess Elizabeth
Bathory may be inspiration for Le Fanu's famous female vampire.
Smith, Andrew. The Ghost Story, 1840-1920. Manchester University Press, 2010.
Studies Le Fanu's Gothic tales in terms of a tension between the present and the past that reflects
the position of the Anglo-Irish in Victorian Ireland. Notes that this tension frequently expresses
itself through hysteria. A kind of nervous, comic reaction to the precarious position of the
Anglo-Irish between the past and the present. Smith writes, " How to make the past truly dead is a
central issue in Le Fanu's tales, which repeatedly assert that the failure to do so will destroy the
present."
Smith, Andrew. Gothic Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Studies the doubling of characters in Le Fanu's "Carmilla" and regards the tale in its political
context as Laura is English, has an Austrian mother, and Carmilla, her double and predator, is
regarded as foreign, both physically and emotionally.
Smith, Andrew, and William Hughes, eds. The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion.
Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
For analyzed essays, see "Essays in Books."
Spooner, Catherine, and Emma McEvoy, eds. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. London:
Routledge, 2007.
A large book of essays by Gothic specialists that mentions Le Fanu throughout. Points out the
Victorian vampire Carmilla as an example of the shape-shifting vampire. Also approaches Le
Fanu from an Anglo-Irish perspective, and discusses recent theory on Irish Gothic.
Stevenson, Jay. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha, 2001.
A very popular, humorous, and off-hand study of the vampire in legend, literature, and film that
discusses Le Fanu's "Carmilla" in a number of places.
Stuart, Roxana. Stage Blood: Vampires of the Nineteenth-Century Stage. Bowling Green: Popular Press,
1994.
Le Fanu's "Carmilla" figures at several places as the erotic tale of a female vampire.
Summers, Montague. Vampire: His Kith and Kin. Kessinger, publish on demand.
Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. 3rd ed. New York:
Mysterious Press, 1993.
Notes that Le Fanu brought Gothicism into his sensation fiction, and that he is unjustly neglected
as a mystery writer. Studies Uncle Silas, Wylder's Hand, The House by the Churchyard, and Checkmate
as early examples of mystery and crime fiction. Praises Wylder's Hand as a flawless mystery plot.
Thorne, Tony. Children of the Night: Of Vampires and Vampirism. London: Orion, 2000.
A study of the vampire in legend, lore, and literature that briefly discusses Le Fanu's "Carmilla."
Notes the homosexuality in Le Fanu's novella and relates it to the homosexuality expressed in
Polidori's "The Vampyre" and Eric Stenbock's "A True Story of a Vampire."
Thornton, Weldon. Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1968.
Lists allusions in Joyce's novel to Le Fanu's The Cock and Anchor and The House by the Churchyard.
Tracy, Robert. The Unappeasable Host: Studies in Irish Identities. University College Dublin Press, 1998.
In the chapter "Sheridan Le Fanu and the Unmentionable," Tracy sees Le Fanu's ghosts as
reflections of "the old families, who either fled abroad, or hovered dispossessed in the vicinity of
their old homes." The tales are "also at once personal confessions and expressions of political and
social anxieties."
Tredennick, Bianca. Victorian Transformations. London: Ashgate, 2011.
Considers Le Fanu's well-known introduction to Uncle Silas and remarks on its significance for
Victorian historical novelists.
Tougaw, Jason Daniel. Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel. New York and
London: Routledge, 2006.
Studies in depth the five stories of In a Glass Darkly showing how various forms of addiction run
through the tales. Emphasizes "Green Tea" and "The Room in the Dragon Volant" as prime
example. Does not bring into the discussion the ambiguities of the Le Fanu original as mentioned
by many critics. Focuses on the addictions as qualifying the characters' distorted perceptions.
Tucker, Herbert, ed. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999.
Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Wiley-Blackwell,
1989.
Briefly discusses at various points, the films based on Le Fanu's "Carmilla," such as Blood and Roses
and the Hammer Karnstein trilogy. Also mentions "The Blood-Spattered Bride."
Ursini, and Alain Silver. More Things Than Are Dreamt Of: Masterpieces of Supernatural Horror, from
Mary Shelley to Stephen King, in Literature and Film. New York: Limelight Editions, 1994.
Notes use of Le Fanu's multiple narratives and how this technique is found in much Gothic writing.
Valente, Joseph. Dracula's Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2002.
"The Hibernian school of criticism has displayed some confidence that Dracula can be housed
within the Anglo-Protestant Gothic tradition exemplified by Sheridan Le Fanu and given scholarly
currency by Victor Sage."
Vance, Norman. Irish Literature since 1800. Edinburgh: Longman Pearson, 2002.
Vance's argument may be summed up: "Le Fanu's inherited religious faith was far from
untroubled and did not prevent him from arcanely heterodox explorations of Swedenborgianism
which probably influenced the symmetries and symbolism of Uncle Silas (1864), in which the
heroine's father is a Swedenborgian."
Vaughan, W.E., ed. A New History of Ireland, Volume 5, Ireland Under the Union, I 1801-70. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989.
In sections written by R.V. Comerford and Thomas Flanagan, Le Fanu is mentioned. Comerford
notes Irish publishers and Le Fanu as an important one. Flanagan discusses Uncle Silas but seems
ignorant of the fact that Richard Bentley was the force behind Le Fanu's setting his works in
England for an English audience. Flanagan is puzzled about why Le Fanu turned to England.
Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004.
Walker, Hugh. The Literature of the Victorian Era. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1910.
Waller, Gregory A. The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2010.
A revised version of Waller's 1986 study that mentions Le Fanu's "Carmilla" throughout. Shows
how pervasive and influential Le Fanu's character has become.
Waltje, Jorg. Blood Obsession: Vampires, Serial Murder, and the Popular Imagination. Peter Lang, 2005.
Wasson, Sara Patricia. Urban Gothic of the Second World War: Dark London. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Briefly comments on Elizabeth Bowen's introduction to the 1946 edition of Uncle Silas.
West, Katharine. Chapter of Governesses: A Study of the Governess in English Fiction, 1800-1949.
London: Cohen and West, 1949.
A rather superficial survey of the governess in English that discusses Le Fanu's Madame de la
Rougierre in Uncle Silas as the only governess in English fiction who is a real criminal.
Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Remarks that the main expression of the Gothic in the nineteenth century was the "eros" and
"thanatos" theme, featured in such works as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Le Fanu's
"terrifying" story "Schalken the Painter."
Whelan, Lara Baker. Class, Culture and Suburban Anxieties in the Victorian Era. London: Routledge,
2010.
An interesting study of the Victorian era that devotes some attention to the Victorian ghost story.
Argues that Le Fanu's urban ghost stories, particularly "Green Tea" and "The Familiar," express
anxieties and fears of the lower classes and the fact that they have urban settings is significant. In
such Gothic works as Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard, "the suburbs and their inhabitants are
frightening in and of themselves--there is no need for a ghost." The Other walks the streets
undetected and is thus more terrifying.
Williams, Linda Ruth. Critical Desire: Psychoanalysis and the Literary Subject. London: Edward
Arnold, 1995.
In a chapter which studies Freud's concept of the death drive, Le Fanu's "Carmilla" figures
prominently. Carmilla, being neither alive or dead, seduces Laura and initiates her life when she
dies, as the summer comes, when larvae turn to caterpillars and caterpillars turn into butterflies.
Discusses Le Fanu's use of this image.
Winn, Dilys. Murder Ink. New York: Workman, 1984.
Le Fanu's Uncle Silas is mentioned as an example of "the locked room murder mystery."
Wisker, Gina. Horror Fiction: An Introduction. New York and London: Continuum, 2005.
This good survey of horror fiction discusses Le Fanu in chapters on "Women and Horror" and
"Vampirism." Notes the transgressive quality of Le Fanu's vampire and vampire fiction in general.
Woeller, Waltraud, and Bruce Cassiday. The Literature of Crime and Detection: An Illustrated History
from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Ungar, 1988.
Notes that the solution to the mystery of Uncle Silas is left to fate, which, it is noted, is similar to the
works of Wilkie Collins. Notes that the novel is an example of the locked-room motif. A rather
superficial commentary that does not see the serious side to Uncle Silas, when the authors remark
that the the happy ending that ends in marriage is typical Victorian novel. Fails to see the
significance of the fact that while the heroine marries, her first child dies.
Wolf, Leonard. Dracula: The Connoisseur's Guide. New York: Broadway Books, 1997.
Discusses Le Fanu's "Carmilla" as an influence on Stoker, who was also Anglo-Irish. Refutes the
often-stated comment that it is a novel of lesbianism. Instead, Wolf sees it as a work that explores
the paradoxical nature of love.
Wood, Jane. Passion and Pathology in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
An interesting study of concepts and models of the mind as they are explored in Victorian fiction.
Discusses briefly the plight of Captain Barton in Le Fanu's "The Familiar" discussing association in
Barton's mind and how it is broken down. Barton is warned that his "excitability" may be likened
to a contagion.
Wynne, Catherine. The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism, and the Gothic.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Notes similarities, such as the change in identity, in Conan Doyle and Le Fanu; and the theme of
fairies in Le Fanu's "The Child That Went with the Fairies."