Le Fanu, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Scary Fairy Stories
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Scary Fairy Stories (2020) (UK, US)
Children stolen by ‘grand’ fairy ladies; fairy lovers seducing humans into their realm; the fey Earl riding out of the bottom of a lake; spell-binding banshee music; and a cursed white cat rubbing up against its victims. Author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published thirty-five supernatural stories. Four, involving the fairy realm, were written towards the end of his life and are among his most successful. They are gathered together here with special introductions. We have ‘The Child that went with the Fairies’ (1870) (perhaps the scariest of all modern fairy tales); ‘Laura Silver Bell’ (1872) (set in Northumberland); ‘The White Cat of Drumgunniol’ (1870) (borrowing from banshee legend); and ‘Stories of Lough Guir (1870)’ (later used by Walter Evans Wentz). The collection ends with accounts from Le Fanu’s youth about his own family’s fairy experiences in the Irish west.
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