Kirjahaku

Carmilla By J. Sheridan LeFanu (lesbian Vampire)

PROLOGUE Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates. This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man's collected papers. As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the "laity," I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any pr cis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as "involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates." I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval. She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.

Carmilla J. Sheridan LeFanu Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 26 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871

The protagonist, Laura, narrates how her life goes from placid and calm to disconcerting and frightening when Carmilla appears, a beautiful and enigmatic young woman. Laura, the protagonist of the story, is a young woman who lives with her father and servants in an old castle in the remoteness of Styria (Austria). She often remembers when she was a little girl and was asleep in the arms of a young girl and woke up feeling two needles in her neck. His life takes a turn when, in front of the castle where they live, a lady's carriage suffers an accident, and his daughter, who also traveled in it, is unconscious, as the lady could not waste time and should continue traveling, the young woman is received at Hollis Castle until his mother comes back for her. Laura and the young woman, Carmilla, make friends, even though the new tenant shows peculiarities in her behavior: she wakes up after noon and locks herself in her room without showing signs of being in it.