Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – författare

En dag dyker en oväntad gäst upp hos Laura och hennes far. Hennes namn är Carmilla, en vacker men gåtfull flicka som får lov att bo hos dem i det österrikiska slottet. Flickorna blir snabbt vänner, men det blir allt tydligare att Carmilla inte är som andra flickor. Varför sover hon så länge på dagarna? Varför vill hon inte avslöja varifrån hon kommer? Och varifrån kommer Lauras plötsliga mardrömmar? När allt fler oförklarliga händelser börjar omge Carmilla börjar Laura och hennes far önska att de aldrig släppt in flickan i sitt hem.

Carmilla är en sällsam historia med som pendlar mellan kärlek och isande skräck. Den är en av de första och mest inflytelserika vampyrromanerna, och sägs ha inspirerat både Bram Stokers Dracula och H.P. Lovecrafts skräckhistorier.

Two vampire stories, two authors, two striking meditations on dependency and desire.

For readers of Octavia E. Butler, Tananarive Due, and Gwendolyn Christie, comes Caramelle, Jewelle Gomez’s latest addition to the universe of The Gilda Stories. This short story offers a supernatural alternate history where vampires seek love, laughter, and blood in 1860s slavery America.

Inspired by a glimpse of affection in Joseph Le Fanu’s 1872 classic vampire novella Carmilla, Caramelle follows two vampires who arrive at a way station on the Underground Railroad not to stalk their prey but to seek sanctuary, intertwining the haunting legacy of American slavery with gothic horror and the resilience of Black women.

In Carmilla, included here alongside Caramelle, Le Fanu serves the sensual, sapphic, and spooky packaged into the experience of girlhood in 19th Century Austria. This original vampire story predates Dracula and introduces the genre as reliant on themes of gender, sexuality, and race.

Gomez’s foreword deftly links the two works by exploring the historical and cultural contexts that surround these two powerful iterations of the vampire genre.

“As in the past we still hold our freedom and our pleasure in our own strong hands. Hands made even stronger when holding on to the hands of others.” —Jewelle Gomez

Caramelle & Carmilla is the first book in the new series Aunt Lute Colloquy, a publishing space dedicated to fostering feminist conversations across literary generations.

Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 26 years.

First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871-72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist.

The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality as an antagonistic trait, leaving it subtle and relatively unmentioned. The story is often anthologized and has been adapted many times in film and other media.

First serialized in the journal "The Dark Blue" and published shortly thereafter in the short story collection In a Glass Darkly, Le Fanu’s 1872 vampire tale is in many ways the overlooked older sister of Bram Stoker’s more acclaimed Dracula. A thrilling gothic tale, Carmilla tells the story of a young woman lured by the charms of a female vampire. This edition includes a student-oriented introduction, tracing the major critical responses to Carmilla, and four interdisciplinary essays by leading scholars who analyze the story from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Ranging from politics to gender, Gothicism to feminism, and nineteenth-century aestheticism to contemporary film studies, these critical yet accessible articles model the diverse ways that scholars can approach a single text. With a glossary, biography, bibliography, and explanatory notes on the text, this edition is ideal for students of Irish and British nineteenth-century literature.