Tags: carmilla

In 1872, a writer named Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published a tale that in many ways paved the road for Dracula, Lestat, and hundreds of other bloodsuckers to come. This was the tale of Carmilla, an undead seductress who typified the bond between vampirism and sensuality and whose dark influence on the genre can still be felt to this very day.(read more...)

I'll begin today's discussion with what I consider a statement of fact: Dracula is boring. That may be the most unpopular statement I will ever write, but I wholeheartedly believe it. How lucky are we, then, that twenty-five years before this abomination was published we were all blessed with another Irish vampire tale? Yes indeedy, I am talking about Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. This sweetly concise and beautiful novella (or short story, as some prefer to call it) was published in 1872 and spawned an entire subgenre of horror: the lesbian vampire tale.(read more...)