Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction. He was a leading ghost story writer of his time, central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M. R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories". Three of his best-known works are the locked-room mystery Uncle Silas, the lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and the historical novel The House by the Churchyard.
The inspiration for The House by the Churchyard: the childhood home of Sheridan Le Fanu in Chapelizod in Dublin
The house on Merrion Square where Le Fanu lived
Le Fanu c. 1870
The seductive vampire Carmilla attacks the sleeping Bertha Rheinfeldt.
Horror is a genre of fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
An Illustration of Poe's "The Raven" by Gustave Doré
Athenodorus
Horace Walpole wrote the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), initiating a new literary genre.
Stephen King