J. S. Le Fanu, Gothic, and the Irish Periodical

Abstract

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu bought the Dublin University Magazine (DUM) in 1861, and controlled its content until he sold his interest in 1869. He had been associated with the journal since the 1830s, and was a sea- soned writer of both short fiction and serial novels. However, Le Fanu’s editorship of the DUM was always unobtrusive. The sort of fanfare that had heralded the appointment of Charles Lever as editor of the journal 20 years earlier did not accompany Le Fanu’s arrival on the Dublin lit- erary scene. No ‘Address to the Reader’, no statement of editorial aim or agenda was discernible, and the Irish ‘colour’ of the DUM, as has been noted elsewhere, was not particularly strong.¹ To find Le Fanu’s voice and to understand the journal’s response to popular literature, it is nec- essary to examine the periodicity of the magazine: to read, as its first audience did, laterally.