save the hero Spalatro from the eternal damnation that seems to be his destiny. Le Fanu wrote this story after the death of his elder sister Catherine in March 1841. She had been ailing for about ten years, but her death came as a great shock to him. Historical fiction Le Fanu's first novels were historical, à la Sir Walter Scott, though with an Irish setting. Like Scott, Le Fanu was sympathetic to the old Jacobite cause: The Cock and Anchor (1845), a story of old Dublin. It was reissued with slight alterations as Morley Court in 1873. The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien (1847) The House by the Churchyard (1863), the last of Le Fanu's novels to be set in the past and, as mentioned above, the last with an Irish setting. It is noteworthy that here Le Fanu's historical style is blended with his later Gothic style, influenced by his reading of the classic writers of that genre, such as Ann Radcliffe. This novel, later cited by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, is set in Chapelizod, where Le Fanu lived in his youth. Sensation novels Le Fanu published many novels in the contemporary sensation fiction style of Wilkie Collins and others: Wylder's Hand (1864) Guy Deverell (1865) All in the Dark (1866), satirising spiritualism. The Tenants of Malory (1867) A Lost Name (1868) an adaptation of The Evil Guest Haunted Lives (1868) The Wyvern Mystery (1869) Checkmate (1871) The Rose and the Key (1871), which describes the horrors of the private lunatic asylum, a classic gothic theme. Willing to Die (1872) Major works His best-known works, still widely read today, are: Uncle Silas (1864), a macabre mystery novel and classic of gothic horror. It is a much-extended adaptation of his earlier short story "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess", with the setting changed from Ireland to England. A film version under the same name was made by Gainsborough Studios in 1947, and a remake entitled The Dark Angel, starring Peter O'Toole as the title character, was made in 1987. In a Glass Darkly (1872), a collection of five short stories in the horror and mystery genres, presented as the posthumous papers of the occult detective Dr Hesselius: "Green Tea", a haunting narrative of a man plagued by a demonic monkey. "The Familiar", a slightly revised version of Le Fanu's 1847 tale "The Watcher". M. R.