“Editor’s Note #25”
If you’ve already browsed the contents of this issue, you’ll have noticed that we devoted the entire number to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873). The last time we gave so much space to Le Fanu was for the bicentenary of his birth in 2014 (see Issue 3 and Issue 4). There is no special occasion to herald this issue, save that we’ve since accumulated a handful of interesting items that I feel deserve broader attention.
Reprinted here for the first time since its initial publication in 1910 is a recently rediscovered monograph of Le Fanu written by his publisher Edmund Downey (1856-1937). While this memoir leans heavily on earlier portraits of the author, notably A. P. Graves’s lengthy introduction to the Poems of J. S. Le Fanu (1896) and anecdotes related by Le Fanu’s son Brinsley (1854-1929), there are some new sketches and scenes that further illuminate the Gothic novelist’s sense of humour and warmth of character. While Dublin’s “Invisible Prince” may sometimes seem an inscrutable presence, even to his close friends, he was clearly remembered with fondness by those who knew him.
It’s not often that new writing can be attributed to Le Fanu, an expansion of the known bibliography, but that seems to be the case with “Song of the True Blue”, a trio of poems anonymously published over three issues of the Dublin University Magazine in 1838. This attribution was made through the papers of Edmund Downey at the National Library of Ireland, and Fergal O’Reilly’s “Preliminary Note” explains how we came to identify the poem’s author as Le Fanu—and touches upon the apparent incongruities of the politics in his verse.
Albert Power weighs in on another Le Fanu curiosity: “Some Gossip About Chapelizod”. This portrait of a Dublin neighbourhood, published in the DUM in April 1851, followed on from and serves as a sort of coda to Le Fanu’s triptych of tales “Ghost Stories of Chapelizod”. This hitherto overlooked text was first reprinted in Swan River Press’s now out-of-print booklet The Complete Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (2011); I’m pleased to present the text here again.
Jim Rockhill’s article “The Faux and the Spurious” takes on the issue of attribution—and misattribution—in Le Fanu’s work. In particular, he addresses that perennial bugbear of Le Fanu scholarship, A Stable for Nightmares (1868/1896), anonymously published stories that careless and overzealous editors still mistakenly assign to the Invisible Prince. And Martin Voracek considers a 1942 German translation of “Green Tea” by O. C. Recht. Oddly, Recht had his own ideas regarding Le Fanu’s ending to this classic tale of psychological terror, and so decided to pen his own sequel . . .
Finally, I would like to dedicate this issue to the late poet and Le Fanu scholar Gavin Selerie (1947-2023). I first met Gavin in Dublin in 2005 when he was here conducting research for Le Fanu’s Ghost (2007), a peculiar and excellent volume, equal parts insightful verse and poetic scholarship. Gavin worked with Swan River Press on a few occasions, including writing profiles on Edmund Downey (Issue 11) and Brinsley Le Fanu (Issue 12). In fact, it was Gavin who initially drew my attention to Downey’s monograph of Le Fanu. This one’s for you, Gavin.
Brian J. Showers
Æon House, Dublin
17 March 2025
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