Jackson and Le Fanu: a tale of two writers

Photograph of Jackson
and portrait of Le Fanu by his son

Raising the Curtain on the Le Fanu Family

11:40 a.m. Saturday 8 November 2025

St. John and St. Ailbe's Church, Abington, Murroe V94 N230, County Limerick

by Paddy Waldron, based on joint research with Richard Mc Mahon and Paul O'Brien

WWW version:

http://pwaldron.info/lefanu/

Introduction

John Jackson is a long-forgotten 19th century writer who also wrote under the pseudonyms of Andy Marinan and Terry Driscoll.
We have been researching his life and works since 2019.

Jackson's output included journalism, poetry, satire, short stories and more.
Terry Driscoll was to Irish newspapers in the 19th century as Flann O'Brien was in the 20th century or Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is in the 21st century.

The contemporaries John Jackson (1809-1857) and Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) had much in common:

both grew up in Munster

Jackson was baptised in Kilrush, County Clare, and first came to prominence writing about the Kilrush Petty Sessions (the precursor of the District Court)
Le Fanu moved to Abington, County Limerick, when his father became Dean of Emly in 1826

both had literary aspirations
both settled in Dublin

Le Fanu entered Trinity College Dublin in 1832
Jackson wrote initially from Kilrush, before moving to Dublin in 1842 to act as Dublin correspondent for the Morning Herald of London.

both struggled financially

This brief talk will compare and contrast their social and literary lives.

The Parallels

Both of their fathers were from the lower ranks of the gentry:

Capt. John Jackson sr. (d. 1822 aged 56) was a captain in the Clare Militia, buried in Kilrush Churchyard.
Very Rev. Thomas Philip Le Fanu (1784-1845) an Anglican clergyman, buried in Abington Churchyard.

Both came from literary families:

Jackson's younger first cousin (and later also his sister-in-law) Alicia Jane Sparrow (Mrs. O'Neill, d. 1858) was a poetess
Le Fanu's many literary relatives included:

his paternal grandmother Alicia Le Fanu née Sheridan (1753–1817), dramatist and novelist;
her parents Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788), actor, theatre manager, and orator; and Frances Sheridan née Chamberlaine (1724-66), writer;
their other children:

Charles Francis Sheridan (1750–1806), writer and politician;
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), playwright; and
Betsy Le Fanu née Sheridan (1758–1837), novelist and diarist (two Sheridan sisters married two Le Fanu brothers)

Rachel Burrows née Dobbin (1912-1987)

related to Le Fanu in four different ways through her father:

first cousin twice removed through Dobbins
second cousin twice removed through Le Fanus
double third cousin twice removed through Sheridans (as Rachel's paternal grandparents William Peter Hume and Frances Le Fanu Knowles were themselves second cousins, sharing a Sheridan greatgrandmother)

great-great-great-niece of Marcus Keane (1815-1883), 'The Exterminator General of Clare' and author of The Towers and Temples of Ancient Ireland: Their Origin and History

Both were non-practising members of the Irish bar:
- in Jackson's case, his obituary at least says so, although there is no supporting primary evidence.
Both started out in journalism, which they later both mixed with creative writing.
Both dabbled in verse in their early lives:

In 1839, Le Fanu recited his new ballad ‘Seamus O'Brien’ at the TCD Historical Society, provoking some controversy by its (semi-humorous) sympathy for a 1798 rebel.
In 1836, Jackson published a poem inspired by the sinking of the Intrinsic:
THE LADY'S GLOVE.

"O, where is SHE ?
Ask of the wind, that far around
With fragments strews the sea. "-HEMANS.

What relic hath fallen from yon wild bird,
: A bider by sounding sea?
What relic, by booming surges steer'd,
: And white as the billowy spray?

Doth it speak aught of the perished there,
: Gone down to their stormy graves?
Bringeth it record of brave or fair,
: Sleeping 'neath ocean's waves?

A Lady's glove! O, bear it hither!
: Alas for the hand it press'd!
Fair cheek hath blanch'd - fond heart hath wither'd,
: And bright eyes closed in rest!

Of the cherish'd, at many a hearth and home,
: There's left but this Relic-toss'd,
Fragile, and light, as the deep sea's foam;
: A type of the loved and lost.

O, when shall the voice of the mourners cease
: To wail in the far-off land,
For her who has left the "vacant place,"
: And severed the kindred band?

Whose glove, like the dove-borne branch of yore,
: Is given for those that weep her;
A pledge that the waters can chill her no more,
: That sweet is the rest of the sleeper.

Kilrush, Feb. 1836.

Both published in the Dublin University Magazine, a literary and political journal:

Le Fanu's first published story, The Ghost and the Bone-Setter, appeared anonymously in the D.U. Magazine in January 1838 (Vol. 11, pp 50-4) under the editorship of Isaac Butt (founder and editor from 1834-8)
Jackson's first published story, Saint Sinan's warning: a legend of the lower Shannon, appeared anonymously in the D.U. Magazine in September 1842 (Vol. 20, pp 341-351), the year in which Charles Lever became editor
A sample page.
A real-life Anne Crotty married into Scattery Island, but not until 1866
The St. Senan story sounds like Le Fanu's Tales From Lough Gur - to what extent did Jackson and Le Fanu both base their writing on gossip or folklore or their own imaginations?
The so-called cult of Senan (488-544) survives to the present, with plans underway for a pilgrim Slí tSeanáin.
Senan also established churches in Cornwall and Brittany, leading to the Kilrush-Plouzané twinning initiative, as the name ‘Plouzané’ means ‘church of Zané’, and Zané was the Irish monk, Senan, whose home was Scattery Island.
Jackson was clearly familiar with the religious beliefs and folklore of his Catholic neighbours.
Le Fanu himself became proprietor and editor of the D.U. Magazine in 1861

Both associated with Charles Lever (1806-72), novelist, editor and cholera doctor:

We have found no account of Le Fanu's first meetings with either Jackson or Lever, but there are two conflicting accounts by Lever's biographer Fitzpatrick of Jackson's first meeting with Lever, including:
When Dr Charles Lever came to Kilrush as a newly qualified doctor during the 1832 cholera epidemic, he joined a very social well-informed set, consisting of

Bobby Unthank, "whose wit and humour Clare men well remember"
Tomkins Brew
John Jackson "who wrote as Terry Driscol" [sic]
Maurice Fitzgerald and
John Lucas, "a descendant [sic] of Grattan’s great contemporary" (Charles Lucas, 1713-71)

As editor of the D.U. Magazine, Lever published anonymous works of the supernatural by both Jackson and Le Fanu
There are ongoing efforts two centuries later to identify these and other anonymous works of both Jackson and Le Fanu.
The germ-thought of Lever's first novel The confessions of Harry Lorrequer was ‘to be found in a series of sketches of the "Kilrush Petty Sessions" which appeared in the Morning Herald when Charles Lever was flitting about in the barrack yards and turf cabins of Clare in 1832 as a cholera surgeon’
It appears from McCormack's biography that Le Fanu was also well-acquainted with Lever.
Fitzpatrick thanks `the late J.S. Lefanu' for `lesser aid' in his 1879 biography of Lever.

Each had a brother who had a more conventional and more prosperous career:

William Le Fanu was an engineer;
Benjamin Jackson was a County Inspector in the RIC.
(The source of the income and wealth of the middle Jackson brother Burton remains unclear.)

Both were vehemently opposed to most of Daniel O'Connell's policies:

Jackson's reporting on the Monster Meetings of O'Connell's Repeal organisation ultimately cost him his job with the Morning Herald
... but Le Fanu came to the rescue

The Warder:

Le Fanu had a financial/editorial interest in The Warder, a weekly newspaper, from Sep 1840 or earlier to 1870;
Jackson, under the pseudonym Terry Driscoll, wrote a weekly letter published in the Warder from 1844 up to the week of his death in 1857.
Terry Driscoll recalled in 1850 how on The Night of the Big Wind (6 Jan 1839) he:

was afther putting up at Sam Lomas's inn at Kilrush, and Sam and myself wor afther turnin the youngsthers to bed … whin the hullaballoo beginned in the heavens. My hand to you, 'twasn't long till the slates thought fit to go on a voyage of discovery through the nibor's windies, and Sam had hardly time to fasten a seal skin cap securely ondeer his chin, whin he got a glimpse of the stars and the dhrivin clouds through the vacancy left in the roof. Well, d'ye persave, Mr. Lomas having been a seafaring man in his youth, I up and axed his opinion. `It's the tail oi a tarnado.' says he.

Both Jackson and Le Fanu were married for around 14 years:

Jackson to his own first cousin Mary Henrietta Sparrow from 1843 to his death in 1857
Le Fanu to Susan Bennett from 1844 to her death in 1858.

Each had at least one child and grandchildren, but neither had any greatgrandchildren.
Their children all lost one parent before reaching their teens.
In the months before he lost his own wife, Le Fanu's name had been first on the list of those raising funds for Jackson's impoverished widow.

Jackson and Le Fanu are both buried beneath substantial monuments in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin:

Jackson: FindAGrave; image
(by sculptor Joseph Robinson Kirk (1821-1894), RHA)
Le Fanu: FindAGrave; IGP Nos. 40406/40407
(The office at Mount Jerome have advised that Le Fanu's is the most visited grave in the cemetery.)

To which of the two writers does the following quote refer?

"It is unfortunate that almost all of his personal papers have been either lost or destroyed, for the light they may have shed on his inner feelings might have helped us to understand him more deeply. Significantly, [he] continued writing up until his death, as if he could not bring himself to renounce completely the possibility of reaching an answer.
...
Dreams played an important part in [his] writings"

[Michael H. Begnal, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Bucknell University Press - Irish Writers Series, 1971.]

Although probably not of the same literary calibre as Le Fanu, Jackson deserves to be better remembered.