Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born in Dublin in 1814 and in 1826 his family moved to County Limerick where Le Fanu’s father, Thomas, took up a rectorship.
Relying heavily on his father’s library to educate himself, Le Fanu was brought up in a family of stern Protestants. As a result of religious tensions in the area, the family’s income fell dramatically in the 1830s and when Le Fanu’s father died, there was little left for his family to inherit.
Le Fanu took a law degree at Trinity College in Dublin and was subsequently called to the Bar – an occupation that he shunned, preferring to pursue a career in journalism. Marrying in 1844, his bride was Susanna Bennett, the daughter of a Dublin barrister. They would go on to have four children. Susanna appears to have been of nervous disposition and in April 1858 she died suddenly following a ‘hysterical attack’.
In 1861, Le Fanu became the editor and proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine and began to serialise his own works. He wrote a combination of short stories and novels which focused on the supernatural and inner psychology. His first major success came with the publication of Uncle Silas, which came about when he undertook a change of topic and wrote about contemporary England rather than his previous works which had mainly either been set in Dublin or were historical fiction.