‘Whom We Name Not’: The House by the Churchyard and its Annotation

Abstract

I have long wanted to edit Sheridan Le Fanu’s last Irish-set novel. However, the miserable condition of publishing, and the academic profession’s even more parlous state, cancels the wish in current cir- cumstances. The text is both lengthy and dense, requiring a vast corpus of annotation with a counterbalancing discreetly critical essay. Beyond these relatively hum-drum aspects of the project lies a topic difficult to summarize, easier to demonstrate. That is to say, The House by the Churchyard incorporates a species — even a style — of annotation, cryptic perhaps, yet communicative with the reader. Indeed, its procedures may amount to a kind of self-interpretation, employing an intermittent but distinctively ‘intransitive’ grammar. Thus, the task of comprehensive annotation could become thematic.