Carmilla (Valancourt Classics)

by J Sheridan Le Fanu

Jamieson Ridenhour (Editor)

Before Edward, before Louis and Lestat, there was Carmilla. Carmilla was a Gothic novella first published in the magazine The Dark Blue in 1872, and then in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's collection of short stories, In a Glass Darkly the same year. Carmilla, the title character, is the original prototype for a legion of female and lesbian vampires. Carmilla selects only female victims, becoming emotionally involved with a few. Like Varney, Carmilla was not confined to darkness. She had unearthly beauty, was able to pass through solid walls, and could change into a large black cat (compared to Dracula, who changed into a large dog). Carmilla had a heavey influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula and later vampire novels.

• ISBN10: 1934555649
• ISBN13: 9781934555644
• Publish Date: 9 March 2009 (first published 1 April 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Valancourt Books
• Edition: Revised ed.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 196
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

So this is a short book, today it would be a novelette and the publishers apparently decided that 85 pages of story needed a 37 page introduction and 72 pages of other matter. I should have skipped the other stuff. It turned the story into a school read and I was not well disposed to that.  The footnotes were also occasionally intrusive, the editor provided a dictionary (from the Oxford English Dictionary) definition of things like "languor" and "traces" so the reading experience felt like a school edition.
 
It's an early vampire novel, one set in Austria, and honestly my only previous experience of stories set in Austria are of The Chalet School stories.  From what I've read of Le Fanu's life he never went to Austria, but he did have experience of a sickly sister.  Maybe some of the ideas of there being some sort of cure was wish fulfilment of sorts, that the defeat of Carmilla would be like the defeat of the illness his sister suffered from? You know what, I could speculate (and the editor of this edition did, at length) but overall it was an interesting read of a root text, rather like reading Dracula a few years ago, to see where some of the ideas and tropes came from that have lingered into modern fiction.  It is also interesting in not being very judgemental about the lesbian overtones but mostly the story left me wanting more from it.  The illustrations were pretty overt as well with mostly bedroom scenes depicted (yes you can see Carmillas body through the nightgown on the cover), so the sexual overtones of the vampire legend are present, even in this ur-text.
 
Without the surrounding literary matter this would probably have been 3.5 stars but the matter got in the way of the story for me. It's the Bookclub read, and I'm glad I did but I wouldn't recommend this edition for the casual reader.  It falls into gothic, vampires, genre: horror, classic horror, and could be used for supernatural in all likelyhood, I'm using it for Classic Horror

[celinenyx]

Carmilla is an 19th century vampire novella, set in Austria. It tells the story of a father and daughter that live in a schloss (castle) together, and that get a mysterious house guest in the form of a young girl called Carmilla. But of course, since her arrival things seem to be going wrong. Laura has severe nightmares, and she's getting weaker every day.

Carmilla resembles Dracula (which was written about 20 years later) in many ways. The atmospheres are the same, even though the narration is a bit different. No letters and diary entries here, just a story told in first person by Laura. The schloss in the middle of abandoned woods was creepy and beautiful, two adjectives that can describe the whole book.

With just one hundred pages Carmilla is more of a novella than a full-size book, which can easily be read in one sitting. For people that are not used to reading historical fiction but that enjoy reading about some old-fashioned, through and through evil vampires, this short book would be perfect. There are also some strong lesbian-romance undercurrents in the relationship between Laura and Carmilla, which might be of interest to note. The language in Carmilla is very pretty, and in my opinion easily accessible for a modern reader.

Recommended for lovers of vampires in the Dracula tradition.