"New Edition" being Bentley's second single-volume edition. First published in 1863 in three volumes. Hardcover. J. Sheridan Le Fanu Publisher: London: Richard Bentley. Octavo (19 x 13cm) pp. viii; 456. Publisher's original brown cover with gilt lettering, blind-stamped decoration to the boards. Frontispiece and illustrated title page.

Condition: Good. Previous owner inscription on on FEP. Cover rubbed. Spine ends torn and bumped. Binding weak. Book corners rubbed. Rear end papers and cover has writing. Text has browning and light foxing.

Sheridan Le Fanu's historical mystery novel The House by the Churchyard was written in 1863. The novel begins with a prologue in the voice of an old man, Charles de Cresseron, that is set in Chapelizod, Ireland, near Dublin, in the 1760s (roughly a century after the events of the novel proper). The story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral and, even more disturbingly, the small hole caused by trepanning as well as two crushing blows. One hundred years before, a coffin is buried secretly, "R.D." the only identification on its brass plague. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs and change the lives of many of its notable characters forever. Charm and chilling darkness abound in equal measure in one of the greatest novels of a Victorian master of mystery. Part mystery, part history.