Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic literature, and also a journalist and newspaper proprietor. He is considered by literary critics to be among the greatest ghost story writers of the Victorian era, as several of his works were central to the development of the genre. Born in 1814 and dying in 1873, he wrote the vampire novella Carmilla. He is known as the author of Gothic short stories and macabre poems, of novels such as Uncle Silas, and of the collection In a Glass Darkly, in which the novella Carmilla is significant as a foundational work of vampire literature. Born into a family of writers, he began writing poetry at fifteen.