Carmilla & Other Pleasing Terrors

Selected and Introduced by Stephen Carver.

‘Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious … ‘

Before Dracula there was Carmilla, the queen of the sapphic vampires, created by the Irish author J.S. Le Fanu. Carmilla (1872) is a landmark in vampire fiction, the character portrayed in numerous horror films, most notably Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers. The similarities between Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) are striking, with Le Fanu’s Baron Vordenburg anticipating Stoker’s Van Helsing, while Carmilla is another undead sexually magnetic aristocrat posing as a descendant of herself.

Le Fanu was a Victorian master of gothic, mystery, and supernatural fiction, and the father of the modern ghost story. As M.R. James wrote of him, ‘I do not think that there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu’s.’ This collection brings together Le Fanu’s greatest short stories, full of horror, intrigue, Irish folklore, and gallows humour, all building towards his masterpiece, Carmilla, the chilling tale of a beautiful girl who came to stay …

There are also explanatory notes, original publication details, suggested reading, an original introduction, and an essay on Le Fanu by his admirer and natural heir, M.R. James.

Contents:

The Ghost and The Bone Setter
The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh
The Drunkard’s Dream
Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
Jim Sulivan’s Adventures in the Great Snow
A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family
Ghost Stories of Chapelizod
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House in Aungier Street
Ultor de Lacy
An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House
Ghost Stories of the Tiled House
My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure
Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling
Squire Toby’s Will
The Child that went with the Fairies
The White Cat of Drumgunniol
Stories of Lough Guir
The Vision of Tom Chuff
Madam Crowl’s Ghost
Laura Silver Bell
Sir Dominick’s Bargain
Dickon the Devil
Green Tea
The Familiar
Mr. Justice Harbottle
Carmilla
APPENDIX I: Memoir of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu by Alfred Perceval Graves
APPENDIX II: Prologue and Epilogue to Madam Crowl’s Ghost by M.R. James