The unexpected guest, the beauteous Carmilla, befriends Laura, the daughter of the house, to such an extent that her professions of affection seem very like the ardour of a lover. Carmilla is a languorous creature who cannot abide the singing of hymns and whose habits include very, very late rising indeed.

In the course of her stay with Laura and her father, Carmilla seems pettish whenever the subject of the local deaths arises – young girls who have been dying suddenly. Frightening events begin to take place as Laura is awakened one night by the entry into her room of “a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat”. She feels “… a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into [her] breast.”⁵⁹

It is the beginning of nightly visitations which more and more drain Laura, yet she cannot bring herself to speak of them to anyone else. At length, the truth is uncovered, and Carmilla’s real identity revealed – she is the Countess Mircalla Karnstein, a vampire who is responsible for the death of many. Her tomb is discovered, and the healthy body within is dealt with in the customary fashion – i.e., a sharp stake driven through the heart, the head struck off, the body and head cremated, and the ashes thrown into the river.

This story features the first English literary incidence of a vampire being able to change its form, and while it bears the hallmarks of the literary tradition beginning with Polidori, it has added features that make it certain Le Fanu consulted sources of Slavic folklore elements. Probably he consulted Calmet’s work, and very likely others. Above all, the writing is of a high quality, which has helped to keep it in print ever since its first appearance.

Dracula joins the ranks

No recounting of the English literary tradition of vampires would be complete with the prince of them all – Dracula.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, and set the scene for all subsequent vampire fiction. It is impossible to overestimate the effect which Stoker’s novel had upon the genre – it is from this story and the elements therein that the silver screen vampire arose, and thus became popularised to an even greater (and almost unimaginable) extent. Even those who have not read the novel are aware of its basic elements.

Stoker took the name of a real historical character, endowed him with a vampirism he certainly never possessed, set the scene in Transylvania and England, populated the story with such enduring characters as Abraham Van Helsing, the psychotic Renfield, the naïve Jonathan Harker and his lovely fiancée Mina, the beautiful Lucy Westenra, Dracula’s three wives, and above all, the menacing figure of Count Dracula himself… and in so doing, created the finest vampire novel in the English language.