The Purcell Papers Volume I

A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, the Le Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, deprived of their ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but, owing to their possessing influential relatives at the court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed to quit their country for England, unmolested, with their personal property. We meet with John Le Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu de Cresseron, as cavalry officers in William the Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a member of the King's staff that he was presented with William's portrait from his master's own hand. He afterwards served as a major of dragoons under Marlborough. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, William Le Fanu was the sole survivor of his family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de Puggibaut, the last of another great and noble Huguenot family, whose escape from France, as a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in high position at the French court, was effected after adventures of the most romantic danger. Joseph Le Fanu, the eldest of the sons of this marriage who left issue, held the office of Clerk of the Coast in Ireland. He married for the second time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; his brother, Captain Henry Le Fanu, of Leamington, being united to the only other sister of the great wit and orator. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, n le 28 ao t 1814 Dublin, o il est mort le 10 f vrier 1873, est un crivain irlandais. C'est l'un des auteurs majeurs du r cit fantastique. Les premiers succ s L'ann e 1851 marque une tape charni re dans la carri re du prolifique crivain avec la publication de son premier recueil de nouvelles fantastiques: Ghost Stories and Tales of Mysteries. la suite du d c s du p re de Susanna, Joseph et son pouse s'installent dans la maison paternelle dont Susanna a h rit au 18 Merrion Square. Le Fanu y passera le reste de sa vie. C'est dans ce chic quartier r sidentiel de Dublin que Le Fanu fait la connaissance du chevalier Sir William Robert Wills Wilde, chirurgien irlandais, et de Jane Francesca Elgee dite Speranza, po tesse et nationaliste irlandaise. Ce fait, bien qu'anecdotique, nous semble n anmoins int ressant noter, puisque ce couple d'amis aura comme enfant un autre crivain, appel devenir l'enfant terrible des lettres irlandaises tant par son oeuvre que par sa vie priv e, Oscar Wilde. L' pouse de Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Susanna, pr sente les premiers signes de la maladie qui l'emportera sept ans plus tard. Le 1er ao t 1854 na t George Brinslay, qui illustrera plus tard les romans de son p re et r alisera les quelques rares portraits de lui qui nous soient parvenus.