SOURCE: "Le Fanu's 'The Room in the Dragon Volant,'" in The Lock Haven Review, No. 10, 1968, pp. 25-32.

In the following excerpt, Scott praises the short story "The Room in The Dragon Volant" and Le Fanu's blending of terror and love themes.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Room in the Dragon Volant," the fourth of five tales collected as In a Glass Darkly (1872),¹ tells of a naive young Englishman who, while traveling in post-Napoleonic Europe, is duped and almost murdered by a beautiful woman who he thinks loves him. Richard Beckett—his name suggests both the Crusades hero and the medieval martyr—spends his time adopting a romantic posture in his attack on life. He enjoys fanciful literature, delighting in the Arabian Nights and Sir Walter Scott's romances; he speaks of himself in the language of medieval romance: he is "a knight" or "a champion"; his whistling is...