In a Glass Darkly

With Dr. Martin Hesselius, five of whose cases are brought together in this superb collection, Sheridan Le Fanu contributed a major figure to the ranks of those occult doctors, forensic experts, and special investigators who enthralled the Victorian reading public. Each case presents its own peculiar revelation. In 'Green Tea' a quiet English clergyman is haunted by a spectral monkey. Captain Barton of Dublin is scared literally to death by the appearance in miniature of a man whom he knows to have died in Naples; this is his 'Familiar.' The young narrator of 'The Room in the Dragon Volant' is more or less buried alive in a French roadside inn. The hanging judge, Mr. Justice Harbottle, in the story of that name, is condemned to hang himself. 'Carmilla' links sexual perversion and vampirism in the woods of lower Austria.