SOURCE: "The House by the Churchyard: James Joyce and Sheridan Le Fanu," in Modern Irish Literature: Essays in Honor of William York Tindall, edited by Raymond J. Porter and James D. Brophy, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972, pp. 315-34.

In the following excerpt, Sullivan compares Le Fanu's novel The House by the Churchyard to Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, discussing the two writers' shared ideas and sympathies.

While his last work was in progress failing eyesight prevented James Joyce from re-reading one of his favorite Victorian novels—The House by the Churchyard by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. But being a resourceful man, and perhaps remembering that Le Fanu had anticipated him in introducing Dublin and environs to the world of fiction,¹ Joyce sent a copy of the novel to his friend Frank Budgen asking that he make a précis of it, marking appropriate passages in red or blue pencil, and that...