Carmilla

Sheridan Le Fanu's 1871 novel, Carmilla, predates Bram Stoker's more famous Dracula by about twenty six years and, after having read Pushkin Press' newly published edition, I'm surprised this story isn't much better known. Admittedly it is written in a typically Victorian gothic style so lots of telling description, and a slow pace, but Le Fanu builds up a suitably chilling atmosphere and I particularly appreciated that three of the central characters are female. There might even be hints of an obsessive love affair between two of them.

I wondered whether contemporary readers of the original publication were as aware of the vampiric storyline or if its denouement in a late scene came as a shock to them. Reading Carmilla now, I could see the tropes neatly lining up as the story progressed - although Le Fanu's creatures have distinct differences to accepted present-day vampire lore - so wasn't surprised to be shown the truth. What I did like was seeing Laura's dawning realisation as she hears the exact story of her own experiences being told in relation to someone else - someone now deceased!

I would recommend Carmilla to readers of classic novels, certainly, but also to vampire story fans who are curious as to how the genre has changed and matured over the past 150 years. Carmilla is quite a short novel which I comfortably read in an afternoon. It doesn't have the action, the gore or the sass of its present-day successors, but it does have an appealing charm which drew me in and kept me interested.

Vampires in the heart of Styria! Published more than a quarter of a century before Dracula and having influenced Stoker (the "missing" first chapter of Dracula, now published as Dracula's Guest, was also set in Styria, Austria), this novella sets it's female villain in the guise of a noble born Austrian girl only some years older than Anne Rice's infamous Claudia who appeared in print more than a century after our not so dearly departed Carmilla. This novella is certainly an entertaining read and establishes much of the lore of vampirism that Stoker and subsequent authors use. It also sets the heart of vampirism further west than the popular Transylvania in, what was at the time of Stoker, Hungary. In Carmilla vampirism finds the heart of its domain in Styria, Austria near the Hungarian border and from there spreads into the Balkans and Eastern Europe as well as north into regions of what are today Germany, The Czech Republic and Poland.