Regarded as a masterpiece of modern literature , the set contains the label of the early Australian bookshop, Tyrell's, Sydney, priced at $25,000.
Information supplied says the first edition of this collection of five of Sheridan Le Fanu’s celebrated Gothic short stories and novellas, presented as the posthumous papers of the occult detective Dr Hesselius, was published the year before the Irish writer’s death.
It includes two of Le Fanu’s most famous works: the ghost story Green Tea, and Carmilla, which had first been published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72). Carmilla is a female vampire story which not only influenced Bram Stoker in the creation of Dracula (predating as it does Stoker’s novel by a quarter of a century) but also provided the inspiration for numerous classic films of the horror genre, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s expressionist/dadaist masterpiece Vampyr (1932).
