Published in the same year as Dracula, an overlooked nineteenth-century Gothic novel centered around a queer, feminist vampire that challenged the norms of Victorian society
In 1897, the same year Dracula by Bram Stoker was published, Florence Marryat released The Blood of the Vampire, featuring a protagonist ahead of her time: a female, bisexual, biracial, psychic (feeding off life force rather than blood) vampire. In contrast to Stoker’s predatory vampire, Marryat’s vampire is a gentle and caring young woman who searches for love but is instead accused of killing those who get too close. Marryat — who wrote dozens of works of “sensation fiction”, a genre akin to thrillers — implores readers to sympathize with rather than demonize the vampire, and by extension the communities she is part of, and to understand the intricacies of her identity and the societal norms that oppress her. In this vampire novel steeped in the New Woman feminist ideology of the late Victorian era, Marryat issues a strong critique of her generation’s gender norms, racism, and medical discrimination in clear and engaging prose accessible to the everyday general reader, a contrast to the verbose and didactic writing of her contemporaries. Marryat’s thrilling plots about women who rejected the traditional notions of Victorian womanhood were both transgressive and widely popular, reviled and celebrated during her time, and this edition will introduce readers to an overlooked influence on the vampire genre.
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