Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was een vooraanstaand Iers auteur van gothic tales en mystery novels in de negentiende eeuw. Zijn werk was cruciaal voor de ontwikkeling van het spookverhaal-genre tijdens het Victoriaanse tijdperk. Beschreven als behorend tot de "topklasse" van schrijvers van spookverhalen, creëerde Le Fanu meesterlijk verhalen vol spanning en het bovennatuurlijke. Zijn unieke benadering van vertelling en sfeervolle schrijfstijl heeft een belangrijke stempel gedrukt op het genre.
A nobleman strikes an agreement he will soon regret. A drunk man receives a startling vision of life after death. A struggling painter's apprentice falls in love with his master's niece, only to see her given in marriage to an older, wealthier man. Mysterious and Horrific Stories is a collection of Gothic tales by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1865.