An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu教程.pdfVIP

About Le Fanu: Sheridan Le Fanu was born at No. 45 Lower Dominick Steet, Dublin, into a literary family of Huguenot origins. Both his grandmother Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle Richard Brinsley Sheridan were playwrights. His niece Rhoda Broughton would become a very success- ful novelist. Within a year of his birth his family moved to the Royal Hibernian Military School in Phoenix Park, where his father, an Anglican clergyman, was the chaplain of the establishment. Phoenix Park and the adjacent village and parish church of Chapelizod were to feature in Le Fanus later stories. Le Fanu studied law at Trinity College in Dublin, where he was elected Auditor of the College Historical Society. He was called to the bar in 1839, but he never practised and soon abandoned law for journalism. In 1838 he began contributing stories to the Dublin University Magazine, including his first ghost story, entitled A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (1839). He became owner of several newspapers from 1840, including the Dublin Evening Mail and the Warder. In 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a leading Dublin barrister. In 1847 he supported John Mitchell and Tho- mas Meagher in their campaign against the indifference of the Govern- ment to the Irish Famine. His support cost him the nomination as Tory MP for County Carlow in 1852. His personal life also became difficult at this time, as his wife Susanna suffered from increasing neurotic symp- toms. She died in 1858 in unclear circumstances, and anguished excerpts from Le Fanus diaries suggest that he felt guilt as well as loss. However, it was only after her death that, becoming something of a recluse, he de- voted himself full time to writing. In 1861 he became the editor and pro- prietor of the Dublin University Magazine and he began exploiting double expo