Uncle Silas (1864) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas (1864/This Oxford edition 1989) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Irish Protestant Le Fanu was the greatest horror writer of the 19th century after Edgar Allan Poe, producing his work in the middle decades of the Victorian Era. His most famous work is "Carmilla," a terrific and weird novella about a female vampire and her teenaged victim that stands in the background of every lesbian vampire work.

Le Fanu was steadfastly prolific over his 40-year writing career as both a novelist and short-story writer. Much of that output was non-supernatural, but it's his supernatural work that endures and influences. To name one, Bram Stoker's Van Helsing was clearly inspired, right down to his name, by Le Fanu's prototypical supernatural investigator and chronicler Dr. Martin Hesselius. Stories that include "Green Tea," "The Familiar," and "Mr. Justice Harbottle" still retain the power to shock and amaze.

Uncle Silas is probably the only Le Fanu novel still read by choice by readers today. It's not supernatural, though its atmosphere certainly is, and it's weird enough to feel supernatural throughout. It's also steeped in Swedenborgianism, making the introduction and notes in this volume pretty useful for the non-Swedenborgian.

A late-Gothic/Victorian sensationalist novel, Uncle Silas concerns the sinister Uncle Silas, a gambling addict, all-around rogue, and suspected murderer now supposedly reformed in his old age. He stands in line to act as his only niece Maud's guardian until she reaches the age of 21 should her ailing father die. Silas, financially supported by that brother for decades, may have an eye on the enormous fortune Maud would inherit upon reaching maturity.

If Maud dies, he gets the money...

Narrated in the first person by Maud, 18 when the novel begins, Uncle Silas sees Maud's seemingly idyllic, pastoral, though isolated country life invaded and infected from outside and inside, the latter in the form of some tremendously bad decisions and character assessments on the part of her father. 

Uncle Silas is a novel of mirroring, duplicates, and deception. Uncle Silas and Maud's fathers are bad and good father figures, the former with some good qualities and the latter with some bad. Maud's childhood home finds a debased and broken mirror in Silas' estate. But good lurks there, brought out by Maud's own flawed but essential decency when dealing with initially suspicious but redeemable figures that include her cousin Millie. 

But there are also dangerous characters throughout the novel. Uncle Silas sits at the top of that hierarchy, like Moriarty pulling the strands of his spider web. There's also the oafish, creepy but physically imposing cousin Dudley and a French governess who really just has to be experienced rather than described second-hand. Her dialect, along with that of some of the country characters, slides back and forth between the representational and the parodic.

It makes for a long but fun and enduring novel. Le Fanu ratchets the tension up over the past fifty pages or so. If you like protracted endings and epilogues, this novel is not for you. If you want a long novel of manners, morality, and Swedenborgian shenanigans, it probably is. Highly recommended.