I’ve been in thrall to the vampire for probably as long as I can recall …

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is a story I return to for the sheer pleasure of it.

Published in 1872, it sits somewhere along the vampire’s journey from folklore monster, through the aristocratic predator of Polidori’s  The Vampyre, and  towards the creature who would be immortalised by Bram Stoker as the 19^th century drew to a close.

But Carmilla has a quality all its own within the tradition. 

Where Stoker’s Dracula makes the vampire’s sexuality frighteningly explicit through the idea of violation, Le Fanu’s tale is far more intimate.

Dracula’s brides are predators, violators even. Carmilla’s relationship with Laura is seductive, possessive, tender, and terrifying in almost equal measure. Its sensuality is remarkably daring for its time — and, I think, one of the reasons the story still feels so strangely alive. 

When re-reading it, I often think of the luscious prose of Angela Carter: that same delicious willingness to let desire and danger occupy the same space, and to make the Gothic beautiful precisely because it is a little bit wicked.

OK, perhaps more than simply ‘wicked’ … 🤪

You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.

All sorts of alarms should have been tripping in Laura’s mind. But I think that by this point she was already overcome. I probably would have been, too.

Over to you: which vampire is your favourite, and why?

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