Green Tea
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Availability: In Print – Hardback
“The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin.” – Swedenborg
Published alongside “Carmilla” in the landmark collection In a Glass Darkly (1872), Le Fanu’s “Green Tea” was first serialised in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round in 1869. Since its first publication, Le Fanu’s tale has lost none of its potency. “Green Tea” tells of the good natured Reverend Jennings, who writes late at night on arcane topics abetted by a steady supply of green tea. Is he insane or have these nocturnal activities opened an “interior sight” that affords a route of entry for an increasingly malignant simian companion? This 150th anniversary edition of “Green Tea”, with illustrations by Alisdair Wood and an introduction by Matthew Holness, is the definitive celebration of Le Fanu’s masterpiece of psychological terror and despair.
Hardback copies of this illustrated 150th anniversary edition are issued with two postcards and are signed by the book’s contributors: Matthew Holness, Alisdair Wood, Jim Rockhill, and Brian J. Showers. Each copy will also include a CD of a specially commissioned recording of Le Fanu’s classic tale, adapted with original music by Reggie Chamberlain-King and performed by Belfast’s Wireless Mystery Theatre.
- More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in issues of The Green Book
Hardback edition limited to 400 copies.
Signed by Holness, Wood, Rockhill and Showers.
Cover art and illustrations by Alisdair Wood
Introduction by Matthew Holness
Afterwords by Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers
Audio dramatisation by Wireless Mystery Theatre
ISBN: 978-1-78380-029-2 (hbk)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin on 28 August 1814. Though he worked as a journalist and owned several newspapers, he is now best remembered for his pioneering tales of the psychological and supernatural such as “Schalken the Painter”, “Sir Dominick’s Bargain”, and “Carmilla”. His notable novels include The House by the Churchyard (1863) and Uncle Silas (1864). Le Fanu’s seminal short story collection In a Glass Darkly was published in late 1872, less than a year before his death on 7 February 1873.
- More on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu can be found in various issues of The Green Book
“This new edition is a very fine little book indeed, a real collector’s item . . . There are excellent illustrations by Alasdair Wood, which capture the grim, disturbing essence of the tale.” – Supernatural Tales
“To paraphrase Little Women, it wouldn’t be Christmas without any ghost stories. Specializing in Irish writers of supernatural fiction, Swan River Press has just issued a beautiful keepsake volume of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Green Tea in which an unfortunate cleric finds himself bedeviled by a demonic, red-eyed monkey only he can see. Along with essays by Brian J. Showers and Jim Rockhill, this edition of Le Fanu’s Victorian masterpiece comes with a CD of the Wireless Mystery Theatre performing the story.” – Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“The passion, love and care that went into this anniversary edition are evident in every detail . . . Even 150 years after it was published, Green Tea has stood firmly against the test of time as a wonderfully eerie and well-crafted ghost story.” – Ghosts & Scholars
Green Tea by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Cover art and interior illustrations by Alisdair Wood; jacket design by Meggan Kehrli; introduction by Matthew Holness; afterwords by Jim Rockhill and Brian J. Showers; edited by Brian J. Showers; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; typeset by Ken Mackenzie; published by Swan River Press.
Hardback: Published on 23 October 2019; limited to 400 copies of which 100 are embossed and hand numbered; xiv + 93 pages; lithographically printed on 80 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands; issued with two postcards and a compact disc; ISBN: 978-1-78380-029-2.
Each hardback copy also includes a CD of a specially commissioned recording of Le Fanu’s classic tale, adapted with original music by Reggie Chamberlain-King and performed by Belfast’s Wireless Mystery Theatre. Running time: 58 minutes.
“A Sesquicentennial of Fear”
© Brian J. Showers, October 2019
On this day, 23 October 1869, readers of All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, may well have been unprepared for a chilling tale of paranoia and despair that commenced in Mr. Dickens’s weekly journal. That story was “Green Tea”, and though it was originally published anonymously, it was penned by the Dublin writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
While Le Fanu is probably now better known for his pre-Dracula vampire novella “Carmilla” (1871/2), for me “Green Tea” will always be his masterpiece. The story tells of the good natured Reverend Mr. Jennings, whose late night penchant for green tea brings on a curious malady—that of opening the interior eye. The Reverend Mr. Jennings finds out that, in opening the interior eye, genii of the infernal plane can also perceive the world of man, and soon he is plagued relentlessly by a demonic chattering simian. For the delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin.
“Green Tea” was collected (along with Carmilla”) in Le Fanu’s most famous volume, In a Glass Darkly (1872), one of the author’s final books before he died in February of 1873. “Green Tea” has since become a staple of horror anthologies, gaining admirers from Dorothy L. Sayers to V. S. Pritchett.
For the story’s 150th anniversary, I wanted to create an edition worthy of such a powerful tale. My first port of call was Matthew Holness, known to many for his horror send-up Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, but also as the writer/director of Possum, one of the most emotionally chilling horror films I’ve ever seen. Holness is a long-time admirer of Le Fanu, which is why it seemed natural to ask him to write an introduction for our new edition. We’d also previously worked together on a volume in 2014 for the bicentenary of Le Fanu’s birth: Reminiscences of a Bachelor.
That same year I asked Reggie Chamberlain-King of Belfast’s Wireless Mystery Theatre if he could adapt “Green Tea” as a radio drama. He did this, debuting the piece at Toner’s Pub in Dublin that August. I’d been searching for an excuse to record this wonderful adaptation, and when work on the new edition began, an opportunity had finally manifested. Each copy of our new edition of Green Tea will be issued with a CD of this magnificent recording.
Then there are the illustrations of Alisdair Wood, with whom I worked on November Night Tales by Henry C. Mercer. As with Holness, working with Wood again seemed an obvious choice. His pen and ink style is reminiscent of magazine illustrations from the nineteenth century. For the book, Wood created twelve original illustrations, plus the book’s striking cover.
Rounding out the volume, Jim Rockhill and myself once again teamed up to write a pair of afterwords to explore the publication history and contemporary reception of “Green Tea”. We had previously done the same for Reminiscences of a Bachelor. Rockhill has long worked as a Le Fanu scholar, with perhaps his greatest achievement being a three-volume complete stories of Le Fanu, published by Ash Tree Press (2002-2005). It was great fun looking at “Green Tea” in depth. As always, we hope you find our scholarship illuminating, possibly even useful to your own explorations.
Other features found their way into the design. For example, the monogram on the full title page is from Le Fanu’s letterhead; and on the signing page, signed by all contributors, we’ve reprinted a facsimile of the author’s signature—I’m afraid the best we could do under the circumstances. The rest of us have signed the page ourselves. I did, however, take the opportunity to visit Le Fanu’s vault with the signing pages before they were bound into the books. There they rested while we enjoyed a freshly brewed cup of green tea (a pot of which I am drinking now. In moderation, of course).
Further instalments of “Green Tea” were published in All the Year Round over the subsequent three weeks in 1869: 30 October, 6 November, and 13 November. While you may have read this story before, we hope you’ll make time this season to return to its pages. For “Green Tea” Le Fanu holds no punches: exploring as he does the absolute limits of a man dogged by a fiend from hell, caught in the enormous machinery of a malignant universe. This is no cosy ghost story, no pleasing terror. “Green Tea” remains one of the bleakest tales in supernatural literature.
