While the likes of Dickens and George Eliot were pretending to be God, diagnosing the ills of society and showing us how to live better, despised sensationalists like Sheridan le Fanu were busy creating modern literature. 'In a Glass Darkly' is a perfect example of this, with its unreliable narrators, fractured narratives, mysteries, ambiguities, terrors, obsession with failures of the mind and body, and disruptive sexualities. There is one story here which is told at five - five! - removes from the original experience, a Chinese whisper a long way from the dogmatic certainties of Dickens. A collection of five stories, linked as the posthoumous papers of a seriously flawed proto-psychologist, the first three are the best, brief, compressed masterpieces of atmosphere and genuine terror: le Fanu may not be a great writer, but some of his visual coups are incomparable, the nightmare visions of 'Lord Justice Harbottle' being particularly vivid. The final tale, 'Carmilla', the collections' most famous, is an extraordinary coming of age tale, in which burgeoning sexuality and fear of the vampiric unknown are inextricably linked in a work of an overt lesbianism unthinkable for its time. The longest story, 'The Room at the Dragon Volant', is barely readable, interminably dragged out, full of deadening padding - there are some excellent scenes, such as the masked ball, but the hero is an unbearably self-regarding idiot, and the 'twist' is obvious to everyone but him after the first couple of pages, that the rest is just a tedious, suspenseless waiting for his dim enlightenment (which, admittedly, is brilliantly done). The introduction by Robert Tracy provdes some good insights into le Fanu's work as expression of national and colonial fears, but, perversely, he seems less interested in the tales' powerful sexual and gender drives.

I disagree with the previous reviewer. I thought "The Room at the Dragon Volant" was one of the better stories. It was a little longer than it could have been, and yes, you figured out very quickly what was going on, but that didn't negate my enjoyment of it. (In fact, in most of the stories you have an idea of what's going to happen before it happens--like the end of "The Watcher.") You can enjoy it if you put yourself in the place of the (admittedly dorky) protagonist and read it as straight adventure.

"Carmilla" is a classic. I'd be amazed if it didn't provoke an outcry for its frank lesbian content. It must have been shocking at that time.

In A Glass Darkly is comprised of 5 lengthy short stories that are loosely woven together by the figure of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a "psychic doctor." Three of the five stories, "Green Tea," "Justice Harbottle," and "Carmilla," are classics of the Victorian ghost story genre, and are frequently anthologized. In my opinion, it is best to read them as they originally appeared, along with "The Watcher," and "A Room in the Dragon Volant," because Le Fanu had his reasons for ordering these five tales the way he did. This Oxford edition is better than the cheaper Wordsworth edition, and has great end notes. Also, Robert Tracy's introduction to Le Fanu is very accurate and well said. In conclusion, if you haven't read the first story, "Green Tea," then you don't know the full depths of Victorian horror fiction, and in my opinion, to get the fullest effects of "Green Tea," read "In A Glass Darkly" all the way through. You will not be disappointed--but you will get the shivers!

The book had hundreds of pages of small text, but very few pictures. The way my wife and I travel, by playing it by ear, this isn't appropriate. I'm not going to sit and read all that. I want a few pictures of a town, a small map to go along with my other maps, and some good ideas of what is good in that particular town. I don't need 80 pages of documentation on it.

Best book I've seen on France tourism

My husband and I took a couple of well known guide books with us on our recent trip to France...but this is the one we found most useful. One invaluable feature is the inclusion of maps. When we got lost in Avignon we had only to open the Rough Guide to find our way. Also, we were able to locate the bus and rail stations on the maps. There is much to be learned by reading a number of guidebooks before you go but this is the one to take with you.

Sheridan's phrase "school for scandal" is a grand metaphor for the gossipy London society of the late 1770's, and the longevity of the play that bears it as its title attests to its relevance in any place and time. Sheridan captures the inherent drama and humor in the truism that people are always talking about other people behind their backs and uses it as a foundation on which to devise a plot of intrigue.

The school's "principals" are Lady Sneerwell and a man named Snake, who like to collect gossip about their neighbors and others in London society; one of their cohorts is the brilliantly ironic character Mrs. Candour, who openly reprehends idle gossip but blithely participates in it anyway. One of their favorite subjects of gossip is the Surface brothers, Joseph and Charles. The popular perception is that Joseph is responsible and respectable, while Charles is a wastrel and a miscreant.

The Surface brothers' uncle, Sir Oliver Surface, returns to London after spending many years in India, hears the rumors about his nephews, and decides to verify them for the purpose of choosing an heir between the two. Since he has been gone so long that his nephews would not recognize him, he visits them incognito. Posing as a moneylender to Charles, and as a poor relative to Joseph, he discovers that his nephews are not quite of the natures he has been led to believe.

Sheridan employs some typical comedic devices like love triangles and hiding characters, but for the most part this is an inventive play that picks its targets well and hits the bullseye every time. Considering it was written at such a turbulent time in England's history, it's interesting that social satire still managed to break through greater national concerns and be successful and appreciated.

This book made it fun and delightful to follow how rumors and scandals are started. Anyone who wants a ligth hearted read in the style of a Shakespearean comedy, "School for Scandal" by Richard Sheridan is for you. It has the most entertaining characters, who anyone could recognize as being people they know and are friends with, and it pokes fun at soap-opera-like dramas that have forbidden loves and misleading coincidences. The situations that arise seem so unthinkable and impossible, and then you realize that you or someone you know has been there right down to the last detail. "School for Scandal" is a entertaining read for anyone who has ever passed on a rumor.

The aptly named Sir Oliver Surface would like to know which of his nephews is the more worthy, and, well, nothing is ever simple. This comedy of manners is one of the best ever written, and it rings true 225 years after its first performance thanks to its snide comments on English aristocrats and one-liners such as "I'm called away by particular business. But I leave my character behind me."

The Dover Thrift edition has no introduction or analysis. Intoduction and analysis are of course not necessary, but in some situations they are nice things to have.

I was disappointed in this. I would have thought the great narrative historian could have produced more vivid and engaging historical fiction.

Banners at Shenandoah is very much young adult or even for younger audiences; it's the story of a young man who becomes Sheridan's guidon bearer. One thing I did like is that the account is not romanticized. Northern depredations in the Shenandoah, scouting in Southern uniform, etc. are described--though strangely separated from the idol-worshipping view of Sheridan himself.

But I found the account vague, bloodless both literally and metaphorically, lacking in description and tension. The Rebels, in particular, are faceless--you'd hardly know they wore gray.

Not something I'd recommend seeking out. There is better Civil War young adult fiction out there.

I read "Banners at Shenandoah" when I was 14, and have been hooked on the U.S. Civil War ever since. Considered one of the foremost Civil War historians, Bruce Catton has produced an excellent work of fiction that combines hundreds of small, authentic details into the highly personal story of a young soldier who serves under the legendary Union general, Phil Sheridan. While a work of fiction, Catton obviously wrote this book with a historian's eye for accuracy and truth. Highly recommended.

Once you get past the introduction and into the actual stories, this is a reasonable enough compilation of vampire stories. Unfortunately, the 'introduction' fails to introduce the collection adequately; it looks more like an essay on the topic "Vampires in fiction as subversion of the Oppressive Male Patriarchy: discuss"... The purpose of an introduction is to introduce the stories that follow it; the closest Ms. Gladwell's introduction comes is to occasionally draw on examples from the stories to support her own points.

While sexuality is a major part of the mystique of the vampire, Ms. Gladwell does her readers a disservice by concentrating on it to the exclusion of all other considerations; also, by treating the stories as supporting material for her essay rather than the other way around. In comparison, Christopher Frayling's anthology 'The Vampyre: Lord Ruthven to Count Dracula' has a much more balanced and informative introduction.

I loved this book. It strikes the gothic romantic in all of us!!

Sheridan published his book in 1975, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a period of turmoil, mass killing, disintegration, unjustice, economic failure and human tragedy in general as disastrous as no other in the Chinese history, maybe with the sole exception of the Great Leap Forward (1957-60), another Mao Zedong's orchestrated descent into hell, this time featuring mass starvation (30 million deaths?) and stupidity as signs of the era. Apart from this, the whole Mao tenure was marked by the Gulag. Sheridan was, one have to suppose, a scholar on the subject of China in general, even if his book is devoted to the so-called Republican Era (1912-1949). How could he ignore so blatantly the consequences of the movements, decisions and political clashes he was reviewing? Because he was obsessed with words. Sheridan loves one word above any other: integration. His book is all about integration, his central theme: integration is supposedly that thing that turns feudal or semi-feudal or backward countries into modern players in the world stage, like Mao's China, as he naively suggests in his introduction. The book itself is named China in disintegration, and his message goes like this: the Kuomintang didn't integrate, so it lost. The Communists did integrate, so they won. Quite simple. There's other words Sheridan loves too, like modernization: like so many other 60s and 70s scholars, he hails Mao as the founder of the "modern" China, whatever it means, like that's good (or bad), like it wasn't Chiang Kai-shek who won the beloved seat and veto in the Security Council for the Republic of China. Maybe, he had to say all this empty words to make a point in the furiously anti-communist environment of Vietnam War U.S. I don't care. That's over now, the people who were supposed to listen to him are doing something else now, and his empty words remain empty. In A People's Tragedy, the Brit Orlando Figes portrays the Russian Revolution and the Civil War as a bloody business from both sides points of view. In his study of the other Great Agrarian Uprising, he shows clearly how the communist won not because they were nice guys who wanted to help the peasants and won their simple hearts, as Sheridan tries to demonstrate in the Chinese case, but because their policies looked better in the long run for the majority of a largely apolitical mass of people who wanted Land. Only Land (even if they were finally cheated, and ended up with No Land At All). Mao Zedong knew perfectly the basics of the Kidnapping of the Agrarian Revolution, that old communist strategy, as expressed in the notes written by the CIA case officers in Arbenz Guatemala (1954) or later by J.P.Vann in South Vietnam. Sheridan ignores it all. His revolution is a Bad Guy-Good Guy struggle, a young, brilliant, idealist Communist with History blowing his sails, versus that old creep who would kill his mother for money, the Kuomintang Confucionist Chinese. That's the weakest point of the book and one real important, because the Communist-Nationalist struggle is the key of the Republican Era, the one thing that basically weakened the Kuomintang's capacity to "integrate" China and finally gave birth to another China, 39 years of bloody soul-searching that ended up with a sell-out in exchange for Coca-cola. Sheridan, apparently unable to read either Chinese or French (the language in which so many excellent books about China are written), as I suppose after checking his sources, didn't have access to many authors that traveled behind the communist lines during the 30s and the 40s and wrote what they saw before 1975. In fact, when he's got to speak about Mao's revolutionary base in Yenan, he doesn't provide a single footnote identifying the sources of his lack of any knowledge whatsoever about the place, though he later states how helpful was for him Red Star over China, that piece of propaganda rubbish courtesy of Mao's friend and frequent guest Edgar Snow. The rest of the book, when one doesn't have to cope with the idealization of Mao and the reds, is well written, even occasionally insightful about the many flaws of the Kuomintang regime and the Warlords wars. Too bad all the names are in the Wade-Gilles transcription, which is currently used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, and is (I believe) inferior to the pinyin transcription used in communist China, and confusing, especially since there is no Chinese characters or pinyin translations anywhere in the book. There you have one of the very few communist successes in history, and Sheridan doesn't take advantage of it.

This is the second in a series of books on modern China published by The Free Press, a division of McaMillan Publishing Co. Although published in the mid 1970's the series still has value for college undergraduate and graduate level instruction.

The writing style of the entire series easy to read and yet conveys much correct scholarly history. Professor Sheridan is the author of a number of books on China and he seems to favor writing on the warlord era of China--1912 thru 1949--having written this book and a biography of the famous "Christian Warlord," Feng Yu-hsiang.

This particular book, "China in Disintegration" deals with the period of time from the 1911 Sun Yat-sen democratic bourgeois revolution up to the time of the 1949 Revolution in China. During this time much of the centralized character of Chinese society and governance was broken apart. Various regional warlords controlled local areas of China and ran them independently from the wishes of the central government under Kuomintang Party of Sun Yat-sen and later of Chiang Kai-shek. Thus the title of this short 294-page book.

The mystery in this book is very easy to figure out, but the storyline is still entertaining. The scene of the novel is also wonderful. Dartmoor is where Conan Doyle situated his famous Hound of the Baskerville story. This almost mythical spot in England is one I would love to visit one day. What I didn't enjoy about this book and why I gave it only 3 stars, is the short shrift the authors gave to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There are a lot of people, including me, who hold this man's detective fiction in almost mythical esteem. The Alberts seemed to portray him as a blundering buffoon when it came to solving this "real" crime.
This story is set around the Dartmoor Prison that was in this country in the early 1900's. It focuses around a prison escape, and when a local lord is found dead, it is automatically assumed by everyone except Charles that the escaped prisoner murdered the man. Katherine and Charles dig deeper and find a number of skeletons in the family closet, and then, when these are brought to the light of day, the murder is solved.

Lord Charles Sheridan, his wife Kate, and Arthur Conan Doyle are visiting the Dartmoor moors when and invited to a seance. A mystic foretells that the host's wife will be betrayed. When the host is found dead after leaving a letter claiming that he was leaving with another woman, the mystic's bone fides appear perfect, especially when confirmed by Doyle. A recently escaped prisoner seems the most likely suspect, but Charles and Kate believe that there is more to the case than the obvious.

Author Robin Paige (the pen name for Susan Wittig Albert and Bill Albert) combines an exciting mystery with a possible explanation of Doyle's great Sherlock Holmes mystery THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. Paige provides a convincing view of turn-of-the century England, a properly Dr. Watson version of Doyle, and expertly weaves the mystery events with hints at the HOUND. I especially enjoyed Paige's female characters. While Charles appeared too good to be true, Kate, Patsy, and Ellie are delightful.

Mystery readers are unlikely to be fooled by the mystery but the combination of historical mystery, historical characters placed in a fictional setting, and Paige's fine style make DEATH AT DARTMOOR a fully enjoyable read.

O.K., not the best of the series, but acceptable. A little more development of the characters and less focus on historical "teaching" would have made for a faster moving more engaging story.

Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, Eddy to his friends, was in line to the throne of England after his father who later becomes King Edward VII. Eddy was an embarrassment to the family, drinking and carousing, going from one scandal to another. He married a Catholic commoner and was discovered in a gay brothel. The public and the Royal Family believed he would never be fit to rule and all gave a sigh of relief when he died in a fire.

Very few people realized that it was all a ruse and Eddy was banished to Glamis Castle, deep in the Scottish Highlands. He lived there for over a decade in a luxurious if isolated suite and was known as Lord Osborne to all of the servants. One night he disappears and his personal servant is found murdered, her throat slit open. Lord Charles Sheridan is ordered by the king to find out who murdered the servant and to discover where Eddy went. He is able to accomplish his mission with the help of his intelligent and nosy wife Kate.

After reading DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE, readers will be glad that they are not members of any fictionalized European Royal Family because they come across as utterly ruthless and willing to do whatever needs to be done to preserve their station in life. Robin Paige has written an excellent mystery that involves German spies, a dark conspiracy, and a servant who is loyal and devoted to a once crowned prince. This work is rich in atmosphere and gives the audience a feel for the period after Queen Victoria's death.

Harriet Klausner

LeFanu is by many considered the foremost of Victorian ghost story tellers, but (and I may now be incurring in literary sin) although his writing skills are undisputedly of the finest caliber, I did not find his stories as poignant and spine-tingling as Edgar Allen Poe's or his style as graceful and fluent as E. F. Benson's, for example; in fact, I'd say there is something a little bit too elaborate and artful about some of the passages in this book as if LeFanu had thought it worthwhile sacrificing the pleasure of reading to the exquisiteness of his occasionally almost labored literary expression. There are actually instances in which I find it difficult to picture the scenes and characters in the narrative - take the descriptions of the inside and outside of Gylingden Hall (story 2) or of Sir Ardagh's castle (story 4) - though I recognize that such impressions may of course be unjust and ensue not from the text but from the limitations of the reviewer himself.

The first and last of the four stories collected in this Dover edition are definitely the most exciting and convey a feeling of completeness which is rather absent from the second and third tales. A very striking feature of the story "Green Tea", for instance, is the razor-sharp precision with which LeFanu distinguishes between subjective and objective psychic realities, and between suggestion and predisposition. The reverend in the tale has suffered damage to the subtle involucre protecting his physical body against unwanted sensory impressions and the leaking out of vital force, and so has become permanently exposed not to hallucinations but to involuntary contacts with entities or energies pertaining to the lower psychic realms, the intimacy of which most of us are mercifully spared. The problem seems to be mendable by physically occluding the fissures produced in his natural defense and thus restoring his involucre to normality, but the reverend himself sees these deeply disquieting trials as a personal chastisement from God - an interpretation of the facts which is always a valid possibility - and eventually succumbs, not to the charges of the enemy but to his own weaknesses and inclinations. A complex and fine plot, indeed.

The story "Green Tea" should be carefully examined by all whose job it is to treat or otherwise help people who suffer from psychic disorders or claim to be haunted by hallucinations - and by those, of course, who love to spend a couple of hours by the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate and a good yarn.

This is another great find. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu was an Irish writer in the 19th Century. This thin selection of short stories is a tasty little collection. It is a forgotten art form: the ghost story but LeFanu does it quite well. This is Victorian age literature with guts. The tales are spooky but also reveal human psychology in the way great literature should. This is a classic of a bygone era. I will think twice when I hear footsteps in the attic and no one else is home. Many themes of suspense and terror are set down in these tales. Freddie Krueger can not hold a candle to tales like these.

As another reviewer said, this book makes some good points, but ultimately is too one-sided. Phil Sheridan's image may be more untarnished than it should be, but if the author wanted to bring it into proper perspective, he could've accomplished that simply by giving us an honest, reasonable portrait, pointing out the shortcomings that others have tended to gloss over. Instead he has given us a diatribe. The author is an attorney, and I happen to be a judge. When a lawyer refuses to admit that his opponent has ANY evidence or legal authority in his favor, when it is obvious that he does have some, I tend to look more askance at that lawyer's entire argument. I had the same reaction reading this book. Instead of being content to bring Sheridan's lofty reputation back down to earth where it belongs, he "trashes" him, and thereby weakens the force of his argument. Had Wittenberg simply argued that Sheridan was not as good - even not nearly as good - a general as he is commonly thought to have been, one might be readily inclined to agree. But he essentially argues that Sheridan was a bad general, and the evidence does not support that argument. Those who like so-called "advocacy history" may enjoy this book; those who believe that historians should simply attempt to present what they believe to be the truth, without having an axe to grind, will likely not.

The author is an attorney, and as he admits, this book is written like a legal brief. A lawyer's job is to present one-sided arguments, and that is what Wittenberg has done here. The result is a book that raises some valid points, but which overstates its case. It essentially is a compendium of every attack ever made on Sheridan, from his personality to his generalship.
While many of Sheridan's flaws and errors have been recognized both by his contemporaries and by historians, it is of some value to lay them out in a single book as a corrective to his largely untarnished image among casual Civil War buffs.
This could have been accomplished, however, without exaggerating Sheridan's shortcomings. Wittenberg, for example, tends to credit Sheridan's every detractor, no matter how biased they themselves might have been. At one point, he even quotes Southern newspaper reports from late in the war, which clearly smack of propaganda meant to reassure their readers that the CSA was in no danger of falling, to support his argument that one of Sheridan's cavalry raids was a failure. Likewise, he quotes Confederate leaders' postwar comments to the effect to the effect that they were unimpressed by Sheridan, without questioning whether their judgments were honestly made, or whether they were colored by resentment over the ultimate outcome of their encounters with Little Phil and his men.
Every success is chalked up to Sheridan's subordinates or colleagues, while every failure is laid at his feet, until one is left wondering how such an incompetent general could have inspired the unwavering confidence of both his commanding officer, Grant, and of his troops. A chapter near the end that recognizes Sheridan's achievements during the final campaign against Lee is so inconsistent with the rest of the book that it seems jarring to find it in the same volume.
As stated, though, Sheridan was far from perfect, and this book is not without some value for reminding us of his flaws. I can recommend it, however, only for readers with a solid background in Sheridan's Civil War career, who will be able to assess Wittenberg's arguments with a properly critical eye, much the same way that a judge would read an attorney's brief.

As stated in other reviews of this work, this book by noted cavalry historian Eric J. Wittenberg will challenge both established history as well as the preconceived notions of the reader. It is heavy-handed at times in criticism of Sheridan, but perhaps that is as it should be. For far too long, Sheridan's so-called "accomplishments" have gone down in history as unquestioned. Scholars will learn little of the truth of an operation or engagement by reading his official reports, and his Memoirs provide some of the best fictional reading the Civil War has to offer.
It is about time that a skillful researcher has balanced "accepted" history concerning this man with arguments of such a critical nature. Perhaps the true history lies somewhere in between - but one fact remains, and that is that Mr. Wittenberg is truly the first modern writer to take on the teflon persona of a man who, inarguably, crafted his own career out of the dust left from ruining others'. Several fine
American Civil War officers went to their deathbeds under the crushing defeats by Sheridan - not on the battlefield where they belonged - but within interpersonal relationships. Sheridan destroyed careers for no reason other than his own desire to capture the glory won by others. It is high time that he be taken to task for his shortcomings and ineptitude.
Sheridan certainly had a great deal of assistance, as well. He didn't have the power to accomplish his aims alone, and Wittenberg deftly exposes this as well. For anyone who is unchallenged by today's "coffee-table" type works that espouse the traditional legends surrounding those who made such an impact on the history of this country, and desire instead to be forced to both re-think and reevaluate those notions, this work will be a treasure to them. Wittenberg's book is no less than an in-your-face attorney's arguments against these notions. As with any lawyer worth his salt, all he or she asks is that you have been impressed enough by the presentation of evidence to intelligently form your own opinion. And ask yourself if what you've believed all along is your own opinion or that of another. In causing the reader to think that deeply, Mr. Wittenberg has accomplished his aims in the way they are known to be honorable - with the credit due to none other than himself.
Read this book. It will train you to ask the deeper questions and explore for yourself how history should remember those who shape it.