Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic fiction, born in Dublin into a Huguenot family and a great-nephew of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Trained as a lawyer, he turned to journalism and edited the Dublin University Magazine, in which much of his work appeared. After his wife's death in 1858 he withdrew from society and wrote at night in bed. His novels include The House by the Churchyard, Wylder's Hand and Uncle Silas, and the stories collected in In a Glass Darkly, among them Green Tea and Carmilla, set the pattern for the Victorian ghost story and the vampire tale.