Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was an Irish writer of ghost stories and Gothic novels, and the owner and editor of several Dublin newspapers. After his wife died in 1858 he withdrew almost entirely from society — Dublin called him the Invisible Prince — and wrote at night, in bed, by candlelight, on scraps of paper. Carmilla appeared in 1872, twenty-five years before Dracula, and Bram Stoker, a fellow Dubliner, knew it well: the vampire who is a guest, a friend and a woman is Le Fanu's invention. His other books include Uncle Silas and the collection In a Glass Darkly.