THE PURCELL PAPERS ... With a Memoir by Alfred Perceval Graves. In Three Volumes. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1880. Octavo, three volumes: pp. [i-v] vi-xxxi [xxxii] [1] 2-236; [1-4] [1] 2-273 [274: blank]; [1-4] [1] 2-289 [290: blank], nineteenth-century three-quarter burgundy leather and marbled boards, all edges stained red. First edition. A collection of Le Fanu's early stories reprinted from THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, selected, with memoir, by Alfred Perceval Graves, including "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter" and twelve other tales. "Less refined [than the tales collected in IN A GLASS DARKLY (1872)] but equally powerful are the earlier tales published posthumously in THE PURCELL PAPERS (1880), an ingeniously organized work that collects the papers of Father Purcell, a priest whose parish was decidedly unholy." - Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 3-140. These early tales "date from the late 1830's and deal with a wide variety of themes, not all of which are supernatural ... The best of Le Fanu's earliest work is 'Schalken the Painter' (1839). In this story Le Fanu removes the action from a Gothic setting to a more intimate, domestic sense of place. The story is a gruesome account of Rose Velderkaust's marriage to a ghoul, and the story contains themes developed in Le Fanu's more mature ghostly fiction." - Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature IV, p. 1600. "A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family," the short form of THE WYVERN MYSTERY, is believed to be a source for Charlotte Bronte's JANE EYRE (1847). Le Fanu was "one of the most important and innovative figures in the development of the ghost story. Author of 'Green Tea' (1869), 'Carmilla' (1871-1872), and numerous other ghostly tales that have had an incredible influence on the genre; regarded by M. R. James, E. F. Bleiler,and others as the most skillful writer of supernatural fiction in English." - Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural. pp. 257-62. Ashley, Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, pp. 114-15. Barron (ed), Horror Literature 2-50. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 996. Bleiler (ed), Supernatural Fiction Writers, pp. 221-25. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 571. Ellis, Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and Others, p. 189, etc. Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 2-60; 2-62; and 3-140. Wilson, Shadows in the Attic, p. 319. Bleiler (1978), p. 121. Reginald 08799. Hubin (1994), p. 493. Sadleir 1383. Wolff 4022. Leather worn with minor loss at several spine ends, crown of volume three chipped, professionally refurbished, some foxing early and late, mostly to preliminaries, a tight, attractive, very good copy. (#169856).
Price: $1,850.00
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