The Purcell Papers — Volume 3

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
217K words
Chapters
22

Tags

English Originals Horror and ThrillerForeign Literature Suspense ThrillerSupernaturalHorror AtmosphereDeath ThemeManuscript NarrativeAncient StyleFolk LegendIrish Folklore

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Purcell Papers — Volume 3 by Joseph Sheridan Le FanuAuthor: Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: May 24, 2008

Editor's review

The Purcell Papers — Volume 3 is the third volume of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's story collection framed as the "Purcell Papers," gathering several short narratives with Gothic and mysterious overtones. Le Fanu excels at creating a gloomy atmosphere, often using retelling, manuscripts, and other narrative devices to build suspense; this volume continues the series' style and will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century English Gothic fiction and short weird tales. The Project Gutenberg edition is the original English-language ebook, easy to search and read through. Since the stories are relatively independent, readers may pick and choose by interest, or use the volume as supplementary material for understanding Le Fanu's short fiction; it is also valuable for comparative study of the Gothic tradition or English short narrative.

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Reading tips

  1. The stories are relatively independent; start with whichever title or opening draws you, with no need to read in order.
  2. While reading, pay attention to the narrator and the retelling structure, and notice how suspense is layered.
  3. After reading several stories in separate sittings, make brief comparisons, noting similarities and differences in atmosphere and narrative technique.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22

FAQ

Can I read Volume 3 without having read the first two volumes? Yes. The stories in this volume are relatively independent; they mainly share the framing device of the "Purcell Papers" and do not depend on the specific plots of the first two volumes. Reading Volume 3 directly will not hinder understanding.
Is this book suitable as an introduction to Gothic literature? It can serve as supplementary reading. Le Fanu's short stories are not long and have a distinctive atmosphere, making them suitable for experiencing nineteenth-century Gothic narrative; however, the pacing is slow, and readers new to older English narrative styles may need time to adjust.
Is there anything to keep in mind when reading the ebook? This is a Project Gutenberg English ebook, laid out mainly as plain text; you can search by story or read chapter by chapter. Using reading software that supports bookmarks is recommended, to make it easy to switch between and revisit the short stories.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, 1814-1873 Author

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) was a significant nineteenth-century writer of Gothic and supernatural fiction, with thirty works held in this collection. Public information about his life is limited, so his biography cannot be detailed here; his surviving works, however, show that his main focus was supernatural horror and psychological suspense. The representative work Carmilla broke new ground with its female vampire theme and influenced later writing in the genre; the stories in In a Glass Darkly present uncanny cases through a doctor's narration with ingenious structure; pieces such as Green Tea and Mr. Justice Harbottle weave everyday settings together with dark terror in a restrained yet gripping atmosphere. The novel Uncle Silas combines family secrets with Gothic suspense. His prose is notable for careful atmospheric build-up and for using rational narration to set off the inexplicable, and it has had a lasting influence on later horror literature.