Le Fanu first published "Green Tea" in Dicken’s magazine All the Year Round (1869) and later reprinted it in In A Glass Darkly (1872), a remarkable collection of his late tales which includes "Mr. Justice Harbottle," "The Familiar," "Carmilla," and (somewhat inappropriately since there is no supernatural episode) "The Room in the Dragon Volant." With the possible exception of "Carmilla," no other Le Fanu tale has been so widely discussed. Its visibility, so unusual for Le Fanu, can probably be accounted for by its novel concept. V.S. Pritchett, Edna Kenton, William Buckler, Nelson Browne, and E.F. Benson have all sung the praises of Le Fanu’s demonic monkey. Speaking for all of them, Buckler states that "Green Tea" "is generally given first place in the canon of his work," while Pritchett extends the generalization by calling it one of "the best half-dozen ghost stories in the English language."

The structure of "Green Tea" is a perfect illustration of M.R. James’s model for the modern ghost story:

Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.

Le Fanu was the first to use this strategy, and he applies it with particular deftness here. The victim in "Green Tea," the Reverend Mr. Jennings, is introduced to the reader by the central narrator, Dr. Martin Hesselius, who in the course of the tale becomes Jenning’s therapist. We first see Jennings at a congenial, tedious dinner party, conversing with Hesselius. They are discussing a German first edition of Hesselius’s "Essays on Metaphysical Medicine." The conversation is learned by also abstracted and rather silly. Only one sentence appears to have any relevance to the possible ghostly experience: it is a hint involving the motivations for Jennings’s odd curiosity concerning Hesselius’s exotic research: "I suppose [says Hesselius] you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it."

The conversation, with its pedantry and innuendo, is a prefiguration of M.R. James’s dialogue, as are the clues which reinforce its implications. Something indeed "has happened." Although Jennings is a reserved, "perfectly gentleman like man," he has a few revealing quirks. For one thing, he has a peculiar tendency to flee from the pulpit during his own sermons: "After proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and eyes uplifted and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves" (180). The situation becomes so critical that Jennings resorts to having an alternate clergyman waiting in the wings "should he become thus suddenly incapacitated." Hesselius also notices a "certain oddity" in Jenning’s dinner conversation: "Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sideways upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there" (180). The final oddity is revealed by the hostess, Lady Mary Heyduke, when she remarks that she used to quarrel with Jennings over his addiction to green tea. Hesselius agrees that Jennings was once "extravagantly" addicted to the stuff, but inside that "he has quite given that up" (183).