A female vampire: the cult classic that inspired Dracula. English original edition- Carmilla is a Gothic novella (1872) by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 25 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871-72) the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). Carmilla is an original vampire story, steeped in the sexual tension between two young women and gothic romance. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) is one of the indispensable figures in the history of Gothic and horror fiction-the most important such writer in English, certainly, between Poe and M. R. James. While a number of his sensation and mystery novels were popular with mid-Victorian readers, it was in shorter forms that he truly excelled, and most showed himself an innovator in the field of uncanny fiction. Mysteria A paperback and e-book series published by Intra. Global readability, Italian charm.