When rich recluse Austin Ruthyn dies from a heart attack, Maud, his daughter is made a ward to the sinister Uncle Silas. Silas is already suspected of the grisly murder of a creditor several years earlier but has never been tried for the crime. Should Maud die before she reaches her majority, Silas will inherit the family fortune.

Rejecting an offer of marriage from the distasteful Dudley, Silas' son, Maud finds out later that he is already married. Then father and son pretend to send her to school in France but she awakes to find herself prisoner and the two frightful villains, aided by the disgraced Madame de Rougierre, once Maud's governess, plan to murder the heroine in an horrific manner.

A chilling tale brimming with suspense.

Collection	Narrator	Length
Victorian	Peter Joyce	11 hrs

Media	Compact Disc	Audio Tape
Media Qty	12	8
Audio Format	CD-DA	Analogue
Book Code	VI-125CD	VI-125TA
ISBN	978 1 86015 023 4	978 1 86015 481 2
Price	£28.99	£24.99

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) Irish journalist, novelist, and short story writer. Called the father of the modern ghost story. Le Fanu was born in Dublin into a wealthy family of Huguenot origins. His father, Thomas Philip Le Fanu, was a clergyman. Le Fanu started to write poems in his childhood. The life of the peasantry became familiar to him when his family moved to Abington, in County Limerick. In 1833 Le Fanu entered Trinity College, where he read law and graduated in 1837.

Le Fanu married in 1844 and had four children. The death of his wife in 1858 depressed deeply the author. He poured his pessimism into his horror stories. Nicknamed as 'The Invisible Prince' for his shyness and nocturnal lifestyle, Le Fanu lived a reclusive life. Usually, after visiting his newspaper office, Le Fanu returned to his home in Merrion Square to pen his stories from midnight to dawn. Le Fanu's son, Brinsley, told later, that his father wrote mostly in bed, using copybooks for his manuscripts. He always had two candels by his side of on a small table. During the last years he rarely went out into city.

Although Le Fanu was one of the most popular writers of the Victorian era, he is not so widely read anymore. Le Fanu's best-known works include Uncle Silas (1864), a suspense story, and The House by the Churchyard (1863), a murder mystery. His vampire story 'Carmilla,' which influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula, has been filmed several times.

Le Fanu died on February 7, 1873.

Click here to find out more about J. S. Le Fanu.

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