Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wrote fifteen novels, ranging from historical romances to mysteries, as well as essays, poetry, patriotic ballads, sentimental lyrics, and journalistic pieces. Yet it is largely for his more than forty short stories--often stories of the supernatural--that he is known today. The novels The House by the Churchyard (1863), Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh (1864), Wylder's Hand (1864), and The Wyvern Mystery (1869) still receive some critical attention; Uncle Silas was filmed in 1988 by the BBC with Peter O'Toole as Silas Ruthyn. Yet the frequently anthologized "Carmilla," "Green Tea," "Schalken the Painter," and "The Familiar," as well as the collection In a Glass Darkly (1872), are the works most likely to maintain Le Fanu's name among modern readers.

A contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe (although he outlived his American counterpart by twenty-four years), Le Fanu shared Poe's fascination with the workings of the imagination, the nature of reality, and...