Carmilla
Twenty-six years before Dracula, a vampire who preys on hospitality and kindness rather than fear.
Le Fanu published this in 1872, twenty-six years before Dracula, and it invented more than it is credited for. Laura, isolated in a Styrian castle, takes in a beautiful stranger after a carriage accident, and the friendship that follows is the first lesbian vampire in fiction and the template for a century of them. What makes it still unsettling is that Carmilla preys on kindness rather than on fear.
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Grady Hendrix
Carmilla is by the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, and it was first published around 1872. Carmilla gave us, firstly, the trope of the lesbian vampire, which just goes on and on. I mean, Hammer Films practically made sexy sapphic vampires a sub-genre in the ’60s, and it continues today. But he also gave us a vampire that preys on human kindness.
Interview · April 2025
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