The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction

A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end of Volume XX.
Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections are herewith tendered to G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, for The Death of the Gods, by Dmitri Merejkowski; and to Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, for The Pit, by Frank Norris.
Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, Irish novelist, poet, and journalist, was born at Dublin on August 28, 1814. His grandmother was a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, his father a dean. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Le Fanu became a contributor to the Dublin University Magazine, afterwards its editor, and finally its proprietor. He also owned and edited a Dublin evening paper. Le Fanu first came into prominence in 1837 as the author of the two brilliant Irish ballads, Phaudhrig Croohore and Shamus O'Brien. His novels, which number more than a dozen, were first published in most cases in his magazine. His power of producing a feeling of weird mystery ranks him with Edgar Allan Poe. It may be questioned whether any Irish novelist has written with more power. The most representative of his stories is Uncle Silas, a Tale of Bartram-Haugh, which appeared in 1864. Le Fanu died on February 7, 1873.
It was winter, and great gusts were rattling at the windows; a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire, blazing in a genuine old fire-place in a sombre old room. A girl of a little more than seventeen, slight and rather tall, with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table in a reverie. I was that girl.
The only other person in the room was my father, Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl. Rather late in life he had married, and his beautiful young wife had died, leaving me to his care. This bereavement changed him--made him more odd and taciturn than ever. There was also some disgrace about his younger brother, my Uncle Silas, which he felt bitterly, and he had given himself up to the secluded life of a student.