Where other considerations of Le Fanu’s work regard the role of biographical and historical context, there is a void in current study which would see this established knowledge applied to Hesselius’s significance to Le Fanu’s late work, genre studies, and Doctor’s relationship with reader. Le Fanu’s literary legacy is most often placed in discussions of the Gothic, but critical voices have also argued for the consideration of Le Fanu’s “Green Tea”, included as the first chapter of In a Glass Darkly, as a piece of Sensation Fiction, prompting the need for consideration of Le Fanu’s relationship with genre beyond a single example. Scholarly voices have also explored Hesselius’s role in bringing reader closer to experiencing desired authorial effect. Current critical conversation surrounding Hesselius borrows from established critical authors in identifying the Doctor’s role as a framing device to the narrative. Accompanying these stories, five corresponding prologues written by the Doctor’s former assistant describe the relevance of the story to follow and often, its significance to the late Doctor’s work. It is framed by the fictional, late Doctor Martin Hesselius, a “metaphysical physician” whose unique experience of the early Victorian era darts between experiences of the occult and the scientific. In a Glass Darkly (1872), composed of five previously-published short stories, is the final fiction published before the death of Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (b.1814) in 1873.
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