Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was the leading Gothic horror writer during the nineteenth century. Born in Ireland in 1814, he grew up in a literary family and began writing for the Dublin University Magazine in 1838. He published his first ghost story, “The Ghost and the Bone-Setter,” in 1838.

His most notable work, Carmilla, published in 1872, was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Le Fanu’s other notable works include The House by the Churchyard (1863), Wylder’s Hand (1864), Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh (1864), Guy Deverell (1865), and In a Glass Darkly (1871).

Le Fanu is widely considered to be the father of the English ghost story. He died in 1873, one year after his most prolific work, Carmilla, was published. It is rumored that he “died of fright.”