Carmilla

“To this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Sometimes, I start from a reverie, certain I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door.” Isolated in a remote mansion in a central European forest, Laura longs for companionship—until a carriage accident brings another young woman into her life: the secretive and sometimes erratic Carmilla. As Carmilla’s actions become more puzzling and volatile, Laura develops bizarre symptoms, and as her health goes into decline, Laura and her father discover something monstrous. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s compelling tale of a young woman’s seduction by a female vampire was a source of influence for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which it predates by over a quarter century. Carmilla was originally serialized from 1871 to 1872 and went on to inspire adaptations in film, opera, and beyond, including the cult classic web series by the same name.Review Quote"Machado’s work as editor is vitally important to this new edition . . . Machado reminds us of the problematic aspects of this seminal work, but she also invites readers, whether they are fans of vampire tales or not, to dive in and experience a book that birthed a trope."—Booklist "I can’t think of a better guide through this ethereal, infuriating book than Carmen Machado—whose Borgesian imagination unearths for us the possibilities buried in its pages."—Jordan Hall, co-creator & writer of Carmilla: The Series “Believe me when I say that this version of Joseph Sheridan le Fanu’s classic is indispensable if you want a vampire library.”—Mary Kay McBrayer for Book RiotBiographical NoteCarmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.Carmen Maria Machado's subversive footnotes and introduction provide a fresh contemporary perspective to this classic vampire tale. A perfect Halloween seasonal recommendation for readers seeking queer monster reads, annotated horror novellas, or unusual classics. This book is also a favorite of academics teaching queer classic literature, monsters in film and literature, and 19th century literature. Interest in this title surged with the popularity of the Canadian cult classic web series of the same name, followed by film adaptation Carmilla: The Movie in 2017.