Carmilla

Gorgeous collectable edition of Carmilla, the richly gothic and seductive tale of the feverish relationship between nineteen-year-old Laura and a strange and beautiful guest at their lonely castle, deep in a remote forest of Styria, Austria. This influential novella came 25 years before Dracula, and laid the foundations for many classic vampire tropes; it delves into sexual identity, desire and attraction, female empowerment, the tension between the human and the supernatural, the innocent and the corrupt, all while maintaining a sense of haunting dread and gripping suspense.

Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic mystery tales, who was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. Author of The House by the Churchyard (1863) and Uncle Silas (1864), it is Le Fanu’s Carmilla that remains his best-known Gothic tale. The story of a female vampire’s advances towards a young girl greatly influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) as well as twentieth-century films.

Dr Sean O’Rourke (Introduction) researches Irish Gothic literature and teaches at the University of Limerick. He has written about the intersections of Gothic literature and contemporary societal challenges in venues like The Irish University Review as well as two upcoming edited collections: My Wild Heart Bleeds: Exploring Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ and its Legacy and Global Vampires. Sean also regularly disseminates research in public-facing arenas such as the Le Fanu Video Symposium he organised, RTÉ Brainstorm and the Irish Film Institute.