Carmilla

Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first serialized in The Dark Blue in 1871 and 1872 before appearing in his collection In a Glass Darkly. Set in nineteenth century Styria, it is narrated by Laura, a young woman in a secluded Austrian castle who becomes the object of both affection and predation by the vampire Carmilla. Published twenty five years before Bram Stoker's Dracula, it is considered a foundational work of English language vampire fiction, and its title character is regarded as the literary prototype for the female and lesbian vampire in fiction. The novella influenced later horror and mystery writers including Stoker, M. R. James, and Henry James, and has been adapted for film, opera, video games, comics, and other media. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/