Sheridan Le Fanu - In a Glass Darkly
[1790]
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| Cover of 1872 edition |
In a Glass Darkly is a collection of five short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1872, the year before his death.The fourth and fifth are long enough to be called novellas. The most well known story is Carmilla, it is a female vampire story set in Styria, Austria. Laura lives in a castle with her father when an unexpected visitor,whom she envisioned, arrives with a carriage.
Carmilla becomes friends with Laura and starts to infest on her. She even has a romantic approach and avoids to say anything about herself. Carmilla's dark past slowly starts to unfold, only to find she belonged to the Karnstein bloodline.
Ann Radcliffe - A Sicilian Romance
[1872]
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| A Sicilian Romance |
A Sicilian Romance was published by Ann Radcliffe when she was 26.
The story is set in Sicily, exploring the vast dungeons and the ways of love of the aristocrats. Two sisters are isolated in the Maccini castle because their father left them from a young age and the servants raise his daughters. The whole story is in its most parts a classic romantic Italian novel. The magnificent thing about the book is the narration and the description of the landscapes. Within the lines of this romantic story lies a mystery surrounded by gothic clouds.
Bram Stoker - Dracula
[1897]
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| Cover of 1909 edition. |
Dracula (son of the devil) is the name that replaced Lord Ruthven's icon of a vampire in the 19th century. Dracula exists as a historical figure with the name Vlad Tepes or Vlad The Impaler. Bram Stoker baptized his character under the name of Count Dracula. In the book the Count meets Jonathan Harker, a lawyer who travelled to Romania from England for a real estate transaction. Dracula locks him in the castle and travels alone in England where he infests on his wife and her friend. Doctor Van Helsing hunts Dracula and forces him to return to Romania.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
[1818]
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| Cover of 1818 edition. |
Frankenstein is characterized by many as the archetype of science fiction. The main idea of the book was conceived in the Diodati mansion where Lord Byron lived in exile and Mary Shelley had visited him along with Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Polidori. The actual storyline was taken from a dream she had there. A scientist explores the forbidden paths of science and gives birth to a creature. The sense of being equivalent with god is analysed deeply in the book in its moral substance. Its subtitle The Modern Prometheus reveals that part of the book and i believe its more important than the monster story everyone talks about.
Edgar Allan Poe - Short stories and Poems
[1809-1849]
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| A photograph of 1848. |
Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be one of the best American authors. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He has wrote 70 poems: "The Raven", "A Dream within a Dream", "Annabel Lee", "The Haunted Palace" and "The Conqueror Worm" to name a few.
Some of his best stories are: "Morella", "Ligeia", "Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Black Cat" out of a sum of 66 story writings.
John William Polidori - The Vampyre
[1819]
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| Cover of 1819 edition. |
The Vampyre is a short story also written in the Diodati mansion. It's main idea was conceived by Byron's story, Fragment of a Novel (1816), and in "two or three idle mornings" Polidori produced "The Vampyre". This is the first story where a vampire is pictured as a noble aristocrat who seduces women and moves among the circles of rich people to drink their blood.
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