Uncle Silas

Uncle Silas is a gothic suspense novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in its final, revised form in 1865.Uncle Silas is told from the account of Maud Ruthyn, an heiress living with her reclusive father, Austin Ruthyn. She learns about her uncle, Silas Ruthyn, and his past reputation marred by gambling and the apparent suicide of a man to whom Silas owed a large gambling debt, an incident that occurred in a locked room in Silas' residence.In order to clear the Ruthyn name of rumors surrounding Silas' past, Austin names Silas as Maud's guardian through his will upon his death. The will also specifies that Silas would inherit the fortune left to Maud should she die while under his care. Maud befriends her cousin Millicent and quickly adjusts to life under Silas' care, despite his often frightening demeanor. Although Silas has proclaimed himself a newly reformed Christian, Maud becomes increasingly suspicious of her uncle's motives as life under his roof grows more and more unpleasant.The story of Maud Ruthyn and her uncle Silas evolved through multiple iterations, beginning with the short story "e;A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess"e; in 1839, before ultimately becoming a three-volume novel published in 1864. This ebook reproduces a revised, two-volume version released the following year.Widely regarded as one of the finest Victorian sensation novels, Uncle Silas combines a classic locked-room mystery with a slow-building portrait of dread, as an innocent young woman is forced to question whether the man entrusted with her care is also the greatest threat to her life.The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)