However, he turned to the writing of fiction in 1838 with "The Ghost and the Bone-Setter," the first of a series of stories later published in book form as The Purcell Papers (1880). These stories purport to be extracts from the papers of Father Francis Purcell, an Irish Catholic priest. The tales, like many linked short stories in the literary magazines of the 1840s, contain a wide variety of themes, but the predominant theme is supernatural horror. "The Ghost and the Bone-Setter" is related by a man whose father, a servant of a prominent squire, experienced his master's return from the grave. Here the squire returns from the dead out of his own portrait. This timeworn Gothic prop is domesticated into a more realistic human, believable level when the subtle ambiguities of the supernatural are explored. Ultimately, the servant's experience of his master's ghost is explained away as a dream. However, such use of the supernatural sets the tone for all of Le Fanu's later tales in which the apparently supernatural events are poised on a dual interpretation--one irrational and one rational.
Le Fanu's lifelong fascination with the spectral stemmed from his reading of the Gothic novel and his frequent use of folklore material.
This is a free page. This page contains 196 words. This
biography contains 4,594 words (approx. 15 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Access Pass.
