The Fiction of G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

For a long time now I've been trying to collect all the miscellaneous fiction of G. K. Chesterton. I was brought up on the Father Brown stories, and read The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill when I was a teenager. Beyond that, there seemed to be a bewildering variety of other books and collections I knew nothing at all about.

"Telle est la vie des hommes," as Marcel Pagnol puts it in Le Château de ma mère: "such is the life of bibliophiles." Gradually I chipped away at my list, until I realised recently that I actually now owned all the items on it.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)

So for the past few weeks I've been sitting around enjoying the ridiculous antics of some of Chesterton's less likely heroes: the crime-solving poet Gabriel Gale of The Poet and the Lunatics, the terrifying Innocent Smith of Manalive, the insouciant Horne Fisher of The Man Who Knew too Much - all the way up to the last of his heroes, the paradoxical Mr. Pond.

I don't think there's much doubt that the best of them come from the epoch of the Edwardian swoon, before the First World War came along to bust the whole of the settled order apart. He wrote a great deal afterwards, too, but there's a cranky, polemical tone to a lot of it, unfortunately.

One also finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate his blatant anti-semitism and the rather smug religiosity which became ever more prominent after his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922.

Martin Gardner: The Annotated Thursday (1908 / 1999)

So why read a bunch of books by a cranky old antisemite? Put like that, it's a bit difficult to explain, really. But I defy anyone to start reading The Man Who Was Thursday and then put it down again without feeling an irresistible urge to follow his characters through their various mad antics.

He was a superb writer, I'm afraid - though certainly he did, at times, write too much and too fast. How does W. H. Auden put it?

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

It's true that the person referred to in these verses is actually W. B. Yeats, and that Auden subsequently cut these three stanzas out of his famous elegy for the Irish poet, but I think they could be said to apply pretty well to G. K. Chesterton.

In any case, let's begin with a list of all his actual works of fiction:

•


E. H. Mills: G. K. C. (1909)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
(1874-1936)

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

1. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) - novel.
2. The Club of Queer Trades (1905) - linked stories.
3. The Man Who was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908) - novel.
4. The Ball and the Cross (1910) - novel.
5. The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) - linked stories.
6. Manalive (1912) - novel.
7. The Flying Inn (1914) - novel.
8. The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) - linked stories.
9. The Man Who Knew Too Much and Other Stories (1922) - linked stories.
10. Tales of the Long Bow. London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1925) - linked stories.
11. The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926) - linked stories.
12. The Secret of Father Brown (1927) - linked stories.
13. The Return of Don Quixote (1927) - novel.
14. The Sword of Wood (1928) - short story.
15. The Father Brown Omnibus (1929) - linked stories.
16. The Poet and the Lunatics: Episodes in the Life of Gabriel Gale (1929) - linked stories.
17. Four Faultless Felons (1930) - linked stories.
18. The Scandal of Father Brown (1935) - linked stories.
19. The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937) - linked stories.

The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937)

To break it down a little, there are five volumes of Father Brown stories (together with three extra, uncollected stories); six novels, and six (or seven, depending on how you count) volumes of more-or-less linked short stories.

In the somewhat daunting array of volumes (37 to date) which go to make up Ignatius Press's edition of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, no fewer than six (with, presumably, a seventh still to come) are devoted solely to fiction.

Here's a list of the volumes that have appeared since the series started in 1986:

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Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Mystery Stories (1993)

The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton. 37 vols. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986-2011.

1. Orthodoxy / Heretics / Blatchford Controversies
2. St. Francis of Assisi / The Everlasting Man / St. Thomas Aquinas
3. The Catholic Church and Conversion / The Thing: Why I am a Catholic / The Way of the Cross / The Well and the Shallows - and others
4. What's Wrong with the World / Superstition of Divorce / Eugenics and Other Evils – and others
5. The Outline of Sanity / The End of The Armistice / The Appetite of Tyranny / Utopia of Usurers – and others
6. The Man Who Was Thursday / The Club of Queer Trades / The Napoleon of Notting Hill, ed. Denis J. Conlon (1991)
7. The Ball and the Cross / Manalive / The Flying Inn, ed. Iain T. Benson (2004)
8. The Return of Don Quixote / Tales of the Long Bow / The Man Who Knew Too Much, ed. George Marlin (1999)
9. [The Poet and the Lunatics / Four Faultless Felons / The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond] (?)
10. Collected Poetry, 3 vols, ed. Aidan Mackey & Denis J. Conlon (1994, 2008 & 2010)
11. Collected Plays and Chesterton on Shaw, ed. Denis J. Conlon (1989)
12. Father Brown Stories, Part 1 - The Innocence of Father Brown / The Wisdom of Father Brown / The Donnington Affair, ed. John Peterson (2005)
13. Father Brown Stories, Part 2 - The Incredulity of Father Brown / The Secret of Father Brown / The Scandal of Father Brown / The Vampire of the Village / The Mask of Midas, ed. John Peterson (2006)
14. Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Mystery Stories – Illustrations, ed. Denis J. Conlon (1993)
15. Chesterton on Dickens, ed. Denis J. Conlon (1993)
16. The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (1988)
17. [ - ] (?)
18. Thomas Carlyle / Leo Tolstoy / Robert Louis Stevenson / Chaucer, ed. Denis J. Conlon (1993)
19. [ - ] (?)
20. Christendom in Dublin / Irish Impressions / The New Jerusalem / A Short History of England
21. What I Saw in America / The Resurrection of Rome / Sidelights
22. [ - ] (?)
23. [ - ] (?)
24. [ - ] (?)
25. [ - ] (?)
26. [ - ] (?)
27. Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986)
28. Illustrated London News, 1908-1910 (1987)
29. Illustrated London News, 1911-1913 (1988)
30. Illustrated London News, 1914-1916 (1988)
31. Illustrated London News, 1917-1919 (1989)
32. Illustrated London News, 1920-1922 (1989)
33. Illustrated London News, 1923-1925 (1990)
34. Illustrated London News, 1926-1928 (1991)
35. Illustrated London News, 1929-1931 (1991)
36. Illustrated London News, 1932-1934 (2011)
37. Illustrated London News, 1935-1936 / Subject Index (2012)

Collected Poetry, Part III (2010)

Mind you, I suppose there will always be those who rate him highest as a poet - and certainly he had an amazing facility for turning out stirring verse at the drop of a hat - or as an essayist and polemicist. For the most part, though, it's his novels and stories which seem most likely to carry on his name.

GKC as 'Fiddlers Green' in Neil Gaiman's The Doll's House (1990)

Neil Gaiman is probably more directly influenced by Chesterton than most modern fantasy writers (witness the panels above, from his immensely influential Sandman comic), but actually his oblique and paradoxical way of looking at things has had a huge effect on detective fiction as well. Father Brown alone must be responsible for a huge number of quirky amateur investigators, more expert in human psychology than in police procedure.

Actually, the more closely you look, the more pervasive he seems to be - in movies and television as well as writers as disparate as Kingsley Amis (who edited a selection of his stories in the 1970s); Ursula Le Guin (who followed his lead in such fantasies as Threshold (1980) - The Beginning Place in America); and - of course - Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Stephen King, Peter Straub, and a host of other writers who inhabit that debatable border land between the prosaic everyday and the uncanny and marvellous.

I'll conclude, then, with a list of my own Chestertoniana:

Chestertoniana

Poetry & Plays:


1. Magic: A Fantastic Comedy. 1913. The New Adephi Library. London: martin Secker (Ltd.), 1928.


2. Wine, Water & Song: Poems. 1915. Illustrated by Sillince. Introduction by L. A. G. Strong. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1945.


3. Poems. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1923.


4. The Collected Poems. 1927. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1954.


5. Essays and Poems. Ed. Wilfrid Sheed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.


6. Collected Nonsense and Light Verse. Ed. Marie Smith. 1987. Methuen Humour Classics. London: Methuen, 1988.


7. Collected Poems, Part I. The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 10 (i). Ed. Aidan Mackey. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994.


8. Collected Poetry, Part II. The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 10 (ii). Ed. Denis J. Conlon. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008.


9. Collected Poetry, Part III. The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 10 (iii). Ed. Denis J. Conlon. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010.

Fiction:


10. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. 1904. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.


11. The Club of Queer Trades. 1905. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.


12. The Man Who was Thursday: A Nightmare. 1908. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.


13. The Annotated Thursday: G. K. Chesterton’s Masterpiece The Man Who Was Thursday. 1908. Ed. Martin Gardner. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.


14. The Ball and the Cross. London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 1910.


15. Manalive. 1912. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1947.


16. The Flying Inn. 1914. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.


17. The Man Who Knew Too Much and Other Stories. 1922. London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1923.


18. Tales of the Long Bow. London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1925.


19. The Return of Don Quixote. 1927. G. K. Chesterton Reprint Series, 7. London: Darwen Finlayson, 1963.


20. The Poet and the Lunatics: Episodes in the Life of Gabriel Gale. 1929. G. K. Chesterton Reprint Series, 5. London: Darwen Finlayson, 1962.


21. The Father Brown Stories: The Innocence of Father Brown; The Wisdom of Father Brown; The Incredulity of Father Brown; The Secret of Father Brown; The Scandal of Father Brown & The Vampire of the Village. 1911, 1914, 1926, 1927, 1929, 1935, & 1936. London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1974.


22. Four Faultless Felons. 1930. G. K. Chesterton Reprint Series, 4. A Delta Book. Beaconsfield: Darwen Finlayson, 1964.


23. A G. K. Chesterton Omnibus: The Napoleon of Notting Hill; The Man Who was Thursday; The Flying Inn. 1904, 1908, 1914, & 1932. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1958.


24. Stories, Essays and Poems. 1935. Introduction by Maisie Ward. 1957. Everyman’s Library, 1913. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1965.


25. The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond. 1937. London: Cassell & Company Ltd., n.d.


26. Selected Stories. Ed. Kingsley Amis. London: Faber, 1972.


27. Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Mystery Stories – Illustrations. The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 14. Ed. Denis J. Conlon. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.

Non-Fiction:


28. The Defendant. 1902. The Wayfarer’s Library. 1914. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1922.


29. Robert Browning. 1903. English Men of Letters. London: Macmillan & Co, Limited, 1905.


30. Charles Dickens. 1906. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1919.


31. George Bernard Shaw. 1909. Guild Books, 253. London: The British Publishers Guild Ltd. / John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1949.


32. Tremendous Trifles. 1909. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1920.


33. William Blake. The Popular Library of Art. London: Duckworth & Co. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., [1910].


34. Criticisms and Appreciations of Charles Dickens’ Works. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1911.


35. The Victorian Age in Literature. Home University Library of Modern Knowledge. London: Williams & Norgate, / New York: Henry Holt and Company, [1913].


36. Orthodoxy. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head / New York: John Lane Company, 1915.


37. A Short History of England. 1917. Phoenix Library. London: Chatto and Windus, 1938.


38. The Uses of Adversity: A Book of Essays. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1920.


39. The Everlasting Man. 1925. People’s Library Edition. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1927.


40. The Thing. 1929. London: Sheed & Ward, 1946.


41. Chaucer. 1932. London: Faber, 1965.


42. St. Thomas Aquinas. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1933.


43. Autobiography. 1936. A Grey Arrow. London: Arrow Books, 1959.

Secondary:

44. Ward, Maisie. Gilbert Keith Chesterton. 1944. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.

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J. L. Carstairs: A Chestertonian Still Life

Classic Ghost Story Writers: Michael Cox

Jerry Bauer: Michael Cox (1948-2009)

Admittedly this is rather a strange follow-up to Sheridan Le Fanu, but Michael Cox gets the nod because he's such an inspiration to nerdy bookworms everywhere.

In one of those classic don't-say-it's-over-till-it's-over turn-ups for the books, Cox published his first novel in 2006, in his late fifties, after a lifetime of compiling anthologies and chronologies and other humble aids to readers, only to find it a runaway success, sold to its eventual publisher John Murray at auction for £430,000!

Is The Meaning of Night actually any good? Well, perhaps not in the absolute sense, but it's a very competent and entertaining pastiche of High Victorian Sensation Gothic, not up to the mark of Wilkie Collins or Le Fanu at their best, but clearly the fruit of passionate adoration of their works.

I suppose my main problem with it is its hero, who veers from amoral Poe-like maniac ("William Wilson") to moony lover with scant consistency. Nor can I quite see why his aristocratic ambitions are of such great interest to so many of the people he meets (a criticism which applies even more sharply to its sequel, The Glass of Time).

I do in many ways prefer this second novel, though: Esperanza Gorst is a far more attractive and sprightly protagonist than her whining papa - though her taste in men is a little difficult to fathom (with the best will in the world, Cox is unable to make her ghastly pompous cousin Perseus seem in the slightest degree plausible as a love interest).

The great thing is, after editing all of those books of other people's work (including a very interesting biography of M. R. James), Cox finally nerved himself up to enter the arena himself. Then, tragically, he died of cancer a couple of years later.

Mind you, he credited his diagnosis with giving him the incentive to finish his long-meditated fiction project. Without it he might well have continued to pile up odd pages without ever finishing either book. However you take it, I think it has to be seen as a very encouraging story for all of those half-completed novels languishing in so many desk drawers. Never say die! Even without the worldwide success and the hugely swollen pre-publication price, Cox would still be a winner.

Seeing how others did it failed to intimidate him: he put himself out there, and his two books bid fair to become minor classics in their own right! Nor is his work as an editor and anthologist likely to be forgotten, either.

The list of his works below is not exhaustive - there are many anthologies missing: of golden age detective stories, thrillers, and a variety of other genres - but it does include all of the really significant highlights in his career as a ghost story writer and fancier (I hope):

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Eiko Ishioka: Victorian Gothic Lolita (1983)

Michael Andrew Cox (1948-2009)

Biography:




M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (1983)



• M. R. James: An Informal Portrait. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Fiction:




The Meaning of Night (2006)



• The Meaning of Night: A Confession. London: John Murray (Publishers), 2006.




The Glass of Time (2008)



• The Glass of Time: The Secret Life of Miss Esperanza Gorst, Narrated by Herself. 2008. London: John Murray (Publishers), 2009.

Edited:




The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (1986)



• The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Ed. Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert. 1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.




The Ghost Stories of M. R. James (1986)



• The Ghost Stories of M. R. James. Ed. Michael Cox. Illustrated by Rosalind Caldecott. 1986. London: Tiger Books International, 1991.




‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories (1987)



• James, M. R. ‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories. Ed. Michael Cox. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.




The Illustrated J. S. Le Fanu (1988)



• The Illustrated J. S. Le Fanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries by a Master Victorian Storyteller. Equation. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Thorsons Publishing Group, 1988.




The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (1991)



• The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories. Ed. Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.




The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1996)



• The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories. Ed. Michael Cox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.




The Oxford Chronology of English Literature (2002)



• The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Ed. Michael Cox. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Michael Cox

Classic Ghost Story Writers: J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)

The Perils of Green Tea

If you want to understand just why Sheridan Le Fanu stands out from all other Victorian ghost story writers, the easiest way is simply to pick up his late collection In a Glass Darkly and take it from there.

In a Glass Darkly (1872)

Of the five stories included in the book, at least three are perennial horror classics. The other two are pretty good also. They include the short novella "Carmilla," still probably the most poetic and haunting treatment of the vampire theme in existence; "The Familiar," a strangely psychological account of a haunting; "The Room in the Dragon Volant," a terrifyingly effective mystery story; "Mr. Justice Harbottle," a very original approach to the familiar theme of the haunted house, and, finally, perhaps most powerful of all, "Green Tea," where Le Fanu devises the most truly horrifying ghost in all of paranormal literature.

So much comes out of this book! Bram Stoker was greatly influenced by it. It's hard to imagine Dracula without "Carmilla" (which he in fact references directly in the associated short story "Dracula's Guest"). "Mr. Justice Harbottle," together with its 1851 analogue "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," also clearly inspired Stoker's short story "The Judge's House."

"Green Tea" is, however, sui generis. The Occult physician Martin Hesselius, whose selected papers In a Glass Darkly purports to be, certainly gifted certain of his traits to a long series of successors, including Stoker's Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Dracula, 1897), Algernon Blackwood's John Silence (John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, 1908), William Hope Hodgson's John Carnacki (The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder, 1913), and even Aleister Crowley's Simmon Iff (The Scrutinies of Simon Iff, 1917-18). None of them came up with anything quite so worrying as the concept of "opening the interior eye" by excessive indulgence in green tea, taken late at night, however.

Green Tea (1872)

Mind you, Le Fanu's fiction is a pretty mixed bag. M. R. James said that Le Fanu “succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer”; whereas Henry James wrote that his novels were “the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight.” He may have meant that quite a few of them are likely to send you to sleep, however.

E. F. Bleiler once estimated that the proportion of mystery and detective to supernatural fiction in Le Fanu's output was something like four or five to one, and even the stories with ghostly overtones seldom commit themselves definitively to a paranormal explanation. Human psychology was always his major preoccupation, which is why so many of them seem so startlingly - if not modern, at any rate proto-Freudian.

Uncle Silas (1864)

If you like lengthy Victorian sensation novels such as Wilkie Collins' classic The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868), however, you'll find Sheridan Le Fanu to be a worthy rival to that master of intertwined plots replete with somnambulism, stolen identity, and downright raving madness.

Uncle Silas (1864) is Le Fanu's one undoubted classic in this line. It's not that the plot of the book is so clever, rather the appalling strain on the nerves built up by so much terror and suspense in so horribly confined a space. Almost all of his other books have something to be said for them, though: some individual contribution to the mystery genre.

For myself, I find the madhouse scenes in The Rose and the Key (1871) particularly effective - and while it's hard to have patience with Wylder's Hand (1864) as a whole, the strange utterances and prophecies which emanate from at least one of the minor characters lend it a particular poetic atmosphere all its own.

The Passing of J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2016)

The same characters - under different names - tend to recur almost obsessively in Le Fanu's fiction: innocent and easily affrighted young girls are one of his staples; another is a particularly reprehensible and amoral type of self-indulgent young man: Captain Richard Lake in Wylder's Hand would be one example, Sir Henry Ashwoode in his very first novel, The Cock and Anchor (1845), another.

Even though their machinations - like those of Uncle Silas himself, the epitome of this type - always come to ruin, Le Fanu seems fascinated by the mechanics of their smooth roguery. His bona fide heroes and heroines seem, by contrast, more one-dimensional and far less erotically charged. An atmosphere of erotic complication - confused gender identities and lines of attraction - is an almost invariable feature of a long Le Fanu narrative, in fact. As well as his fourteen full-length novels, he wrote many novellas and long short stories, not all of them collected to this day.

Strangely enough, although he's been canonised as a quintessentially Irish writer, only his first three novels are actually set there. All the others take place in old, off-the-beaten-track parts of England. It's hard to see that this makes much difference, though. His ancient, shadowy wooded estates really exist nowhere but in his own imagination, and that imagination remained staunchly Irish throughout his life: for the most part, though, the guilty Anglo-Irish culture of the Protestant ascendancy. It's no accident that Jonathan Swift has a walk-on part in his first novel, and that the sole topic of his conversation is his need to find a living on the other side of the Irish sea.

Le Fanu's own lifestyle was, by all accounts - at least latterly, after the death of his wife - bizarre. He wrote at night, in his grim old house in Dublin, with the help of copious doses of green tea. Like one of his own characters, he had a recurring dream that the house would come down on his head. When he was found dead one morning, at the fairly early age of 58, the doctor who examined him commented wryly that the house had fallen at last. He is reputed - though on somewhat uncertain evidence - to have died of fright.

All I can say in conclusion is that work is distinctly addictive. The more of it you read, the more appetite you feel for it. I've read about half of his novels, and am anxious to read all the others. There's something particularly satisfactory about lying in bed with what my own doctor calls "para-influenza" and reading a series of Le Fanu novellas and novels. The slightly visionary effect of the illness brings out the best in his long, convoluted - at times dreamlike - narratives.

The ghost stories, though, can be read at almost any time, in almost any mood. He was unquestionably a genius. His work may have its limitations, but is almost perfect of its kind within them. If you haven't experienced it yet, bon appétit!

Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu
(1814-1873)

1. The Cock and Anchor. 1845. Introduction by Herbert van Thal. The First Novel Library. London: Cassell, 1967.


2. The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien (1847)


3. Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851)
   1. The Watcher
   2. The Murdered Cousin
   3. Schalken the Painter
   4. The Evil Guest


4. The House by the Churchyard. 1863. Introduction by Elizabeth Bowen. The Doughty Library. London: Anthony Blond, 1968.


5. Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. 1864. Ed. Victor Sage. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2000.


6. Wylder’s Hand. 1864. New York: Dover, 1978.


7. Guy Deverell. 1865. New York: Dover, 1984.


8. All in the Dark. 1866. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.


9. The Tenants of Malory. 1867. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.


10. A Lost Name. 1868. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.


11. Haunted Lives. 1868. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.


12. The Wyvern Mystery. 1869. Pocket Classics. 1994. Phoenix Mill, Far Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 2000.


13. Checkmate. 1871. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.


14. Chronicles of Golden Friars. 1871. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
    1. A Strange Adventure in the Life of Miss Laura Mildmay
    2. The Haunted Baronet
    3. The Bird of Passage


15. The Rose and the Key. 1871. Pocket Classics. Phoenix Mill, Far Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1994.


16. In a Glass Darkly: Stories. 1872. Introduction by V. S. Pritchett. London: John Lehmann, 1947.
    1. Green Tea
    2. The Familiar
    3. Mr Justice Harbottle
    4. The Room in the Dragon Volant
    5. Carmilla


17. Willing to Die. 1872. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.


18. The Purcell Papers. 1880. Serenity Publishers, LLC, 2011.
    1. The Ghost and the Bone-Setter (January 1838)
    2. The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh (March 1838)
    3. The Last Heir of Castle Connor (June 1838)
    4. The Drunkard's Dream (August 1838)
    5. A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess (November 1838)
    6. The Bridal of Carrigvarah (April 1839)
    7. A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (May 1839)
    8. Scraps of Hibernian Ballads (June 1839)
    9. Jim Sullivan's Adventures in the Great Snow (July 1839)
    10. A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family (October 1839)
    11. An Adventure of Hardress Fitzgerald, a Royalist Captain (February 1840)
    12. The Quare Gander (October 1840)
    13. Billy Maloney's Taste of Love and Glory (June 1850)


19. The Watcher and Other Weird Stories. Preface by Brinsley Le Fanu. 1894. New English Library Classic Series. London: The New English Library, 1974.
    1. The Watcher
    2. Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
    3. Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
    4. The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh
    5. The Dream
    6. A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family


20. Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. Ed. M. R. James. 1923. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1994.
    1. Madam Crowl's Ghost (from All the Year Round, December 1870)
    2. Squire Toby's Will (from Temple Bar, January 1868)
    3. Dickon the Devil (from London Society, Christmas Number, 1872)
    4. The Child That Went with the Fairies (from All the Year Round, February 1870)
    5. The White Cat of Drumgunniol (from All the Year Round, April 1870)
    6. An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street (from the Dublin University Magazine, January 1851)
    7. Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (from the Dublin University Magazine, January 1851)
    8. Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling (from the Dublin University Magazine, April 1864)
    9. Sir Dominick's Bargain (from All the Year Round, July 1872)
    10. Ultor de Lacy (from the Dublin University Magazine, December 1861)
    11. The Vision of Tom Chuff (from All the Year Round, October 1870)
    12. Stories of Lough Guir (from All the Year Round, April 1870)


21. Best Ghost Stories. Ed. E. F. Bleiler. New York: Dover, 1964.
    1. Squire Toby's Will
    2. Schalken the Painter
    3. Madam Crowl's Ghost
    4. The Haunted Baronet
    5. Green Tea
    6. The Familiar
    7. Mr. Justice Harbottle
    8. Carmilla
    9. The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh
    10. An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
    11. The Dead Sexton
    12. Ghost Stories of the Tiled House
    13. The White Cat of Drumgunniol
    14. An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House [non-fiction]
    15. Sir Dominick's Bargain
    16. Ultor de Lacy


22. Ghost Stories and Mysteries. Ed. E. F. Bleiler. New York: Dover, 1975.
    1. The Room in the Dragon Volant (from London Society, 1872)
    2. Laura Silver Bell (from Belgravia Annual, 1872)
    3. Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling (from Dublin University Magazine, 1869)
    4. Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (from Dublin University Magazine, 1851)
    5. The Child That Went with the Fairies (from All the Year Round, 1870)
    6. Stories of Lough Guir (from All the Year Round, 1870)
    7. The Vision of Tom Chuff (from All the Year Round, 1870)
    8. The Drunkard's Dream (from Dublin University Magazine, 1838)
    9. Dickon the Devil (from London Society, 1872)
    10. The Ghost and the Bone Setter (from Dublin University Magazine, 1838)
    11. A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family (from Dublin University Magazine, 1839)
    12. The Murdered Cousin (in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, 1851 - originally published as "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" in Dublin University Magazine, 1838)
    13. The Evil Guest (in Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, 1851)
    14. The Mysterious Lodger (from Dublin University Magazine, 1850)


23. Cox, Michael, ed. The Illustrated J. S. Le Fanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries by a Master Victorian Storyteller. Equation. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Thorsons Publishing Group, 1988.
    1. Schalken the Painter
    2. The Familiar
    3. The Murdered Cousin
    4. An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
    5. Ghost Stories of the Tiled House
    6. Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling
    7. Squire Toby's Will
    8. Green Tea
    9. Madam Crowl's Ghost
    10. Mr Justice Harbottle
    11. The Room in the Dragon Volant


24. Spalatro: Two Italian Tales. 1843. Mountain Ash, Wales: Sarob Press, 2001.


25. The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of J. Sheridan Le Fanu. 8 vols. UK: Leonaur, 2010.
    1. The Haunted Baronet / The Evil Guest / Carmilla / A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family / 10 short stories: A Debt of Honour; An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street; An Adventure of Hardress Fitzgerald, a Royalist Captain; An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House; Billy Malowney's Taste of Love and Glory; Borrhomeo the Astrologer; Catherine's Quest; Devereux's Dream; Doctor Feversham's Story & The little Red Man
    2. Uncle Silas / Green Tea / 5 short stories: Ghost Stories of Chapelizod; Ghost Stories of the Tiled House; Haunted; Jim Sulivan's Adventures in the Great Snow & Laura Silver Bell
    3. The House by the Churchyard / 1 short story: Dickon the Devil.
    4. The Wyvern Mystery / Mr. Justice Harbottle / 9 short stories: Madam Crowl's Ghost; Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess; Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse; Schalken the Painter; Scraps of Hibernian Ballads; Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling; Squire Toby's Will; Stories of Lough Guir & Sir Dominick's Bargain.
    5. The Rose and the Key / Spalatro, From the Notes of Fra Giacomo / 2 short stories: The Bridal of Carrigvarah & The White Cat of Drumgunniol.
    6. Checkmate / 6 short stories: The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh; The Child That Went With the Fairies; What Was It?; Ultor De Lacy: a Legend of Cappercullen; Fireside Horrors For Christmas & The Questioning of Paddy Mullowney's Ghost
    7. All in the Dark / The Room in the Dragon Volant / The Mysterious Lodger / The Watcher / 3 short stories: The Drunkard's Dream; The Ghost and the Bone-Setter & The Legend of Dunblane.
    8. A Lost Name / The Last Heir of Castle Connor / 6 short stories: The Phantom Fourth; The Quare Gander; The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts; The Spirit's Whisper; The Vision of Tom Chuff & Some Gossip About Chapelizod.

Sheridan Le Fanu