Sheridan Le Fanu

In 1814, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born into a family of literate Irish and English Protestants in Dublin. Throughout his childhood, he and his family moved frequently around the country, and he largely educated himself by reading books from his father’s library. He attended Trinity College in Dublin, originally studying law, but ultimately dropping it for journalism. He contributed to various magazines during this time, publishing his first horror story in 1838. He married Susanna Bennett in 1844 and they had four children together. However, in 1856 she began to suffer from extreme anxiety and neurosis, dying in 1858. This brought great grief to Le Fanu, who refused to write fiction again until his mother died three years later in 1861. Afterwards, he resumed writing and publishing fiction, becoming the editor of the Dublin University Magazine. He continued writing until his death from a heart attack in Dublin at the age of 58. Although Le Fanu experimented with many different genres throughout his lifetime, he was and remains best known for his Gothic horror and mystery novels.