Book Review: A Mind Turned in Upon Itself by Jim Rockhill

For many years, Jim Rockhill has been a staunch advocate for the work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, most probably Ireland’s premier writer of supernatural tales and the uncanny. Between 2002 and 2005, Rockhill edited a major three-volume collection of Le Fanu’s supernatural fiction for Ash-Tree Press, writing a highly informative introduction for each volume. It is these three introductions that form the backbone of this new critical work published by Swan River Press, with some amendments and updatings to allow them to be read as one comprehensive overview of the life and work of Le Fanu.

Of significance in A Mind Turned in Upon Itself is Rockhill’s investigation of the role the Le Fanu family estate in Limerick and attendant tensions amongst the Catholic majority played in shaping Le Fanu’s fiction; an important attribute of his fiction was the quality of uncertainty that would have been fostered in part by Le Fanu’s sympathy for the plight of the Irish while remaining in favour of a continued union with Britain. Throughout the book, Rockhill places Le Fanu’s work in the context of what was happening in Ireland at the time and the prevailing attitudes and inter-relationship of the landed gentry and the Irish peasantry.

Rockhill digs deeper, though, exploring further the elements that make Le Fanu’s work so compelling, and notes the influence of Swedenborg’s cosmology on his fiction, in particular Swedenborg’s work of philosophical investigation, Heaven and Hell, which had a major impact on Victorian sensibilities in general, and we are treated to cogent examinations of almost all of his supernatural fiction, with particularly penetrating analyses of the brooding menace of Uncle Silas, the terrifying disintegration of Reverend Jennings in ‘Green Tea’, the erotic vampirism of ‘Carmilla’, and several other novels and short stories.

Also included in this excellent celebration of the life and work of Le Fanu are several essays Rockhill wrote for a number of journals over the years, including: an examination of the misattribution of several works to Le Fanu, a look at the evolution of ‘The Watcher’ into ‘The Familiar’, contemporary reviews of ‘Green Tea’, and an investigation into the likely reasons for H. P. Lovecraft’s dismissal of Le Fanu’s importance in the field of supernatural fiction.

In A Mind Turned in Upon Itself, Jim Rockhill abundantly demonstrates his love and appreciation for J. S. Le Fanu’s fiction and presents such an enthusiastic examination of the work as to inspire people to seek out whatever of that work they have not so far read. Highly recommended.

A Mind Turned in Upon Itself: Writings on J. S. Le Fanu by Jim Rockhill (Swan River Press, hb, 237pp, €40.00)