Le Fanu (J. Sheridan) In a Glass Darkly
£1,950
London, Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1923.
8vo. Original turquise cloth, upper cover bordered in blind with gilt lettering, spine lettered in gilt. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A scarce edition of Le Fanu’s five celebrated tales, presented as cases from the papers of Dr Martin Hesselius: ‘Green Tea,’ in which a clergyman is pursued to madness by a spectral monkey visible to no one else; ‘The Familiar,’ where a sea captain is stalked by a dwarfish figure out of his past; ‘Mr Justice Harbottle,’ a hanging judge tried and condemned by a monstrous version of himself; ‘The Room in the Dragon Volant,’ a mystery of premature burial; and ‘Carmilla,’ Le Fanu’s vampire novella and the most consequential of them all, preceding Dracula by a quarter of a century and establishing the female vampire and her erotically charged pursuit of a young woman as a permanent fixture of the form. The influence runs directly to Stoker, and onward through the whole subsequent tradition of the vampire in fiction and film. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) stands with Maturin at the head of the Irish Gothic line, and In a Glass Darkly, first published in three volumes in 1872, is his most enduring book. This 1923 Eveleigh Nash & Grayson edition is a scarce imprint, possibly the earliest achievable appearance of the collection in a dust-jacket, preceding the Peter Davies edition of 1929 illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.
In stock
- A very crisp, clean, bright copy, top edge slightly dusty with some spotting, 2 cm, round, glue residue (also one slightly smaller to the rear pastedown, concealed under the rear flap), remnant of sticker along the gutter edge of the front pastedown; cloth very good; dust-jacket with small chips and minor loss to the top and lower edges of the upper cover, likewise to the spine (although the pink ink used on the spine panel may look slightly faded, this appears to have arisen in the printing process since the blue ink is strong, and there is no sign of fading/darkening to the cloth of the spine), rear cover with a ragged tear and loss at head.
Jacket artwork by C. Buchel.
From a private library with the small, circular ink stamp of The IBC Library to upper corner of the front free endpaper.
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