Sheridan le Fanu

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer, who is still well-known today for mystery novels and short stories about the supernatural. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century. Born in 1814 in Dublin, le Fanu was brought up by a strict Protestant man of religion in a Catholic country. The family never had enough money to keep up the social position they wanted. Le Fanu trained to become a lawyer but switched careers to journalism instead. Although he was the most important writer of ghost and mystery stories of his age, he was always short of money. He died in 1873.