In 1897, the British public’s appetite for Gothic speculative fiction showed little sign of waning, and there is perhaps no more famous example of Gothic fiction from the period than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. While the novel’s women are by turns monstruous and victimized, Stoker’s text neglects to provide a portrait of a female vampire on par with his infamous Count. Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire, from the same year, focuses on Harriet Brandt, a biracial woman who compulsively drains her victims’ life force rather than their blood. The Blood of the Vampire expands the genre of Gothic fiction in the nineteenth century—it is not merely “the other 1897 vampire novel,” but a milestone of the genre and a work that ingeniously reflected the Victorians’ own anxieties back to them.
This Broadview Edition includes a critical introduction and a broad range of historical appendices that expand the reader’s understanding of the novel’s historical context; materials on spiritualism, obeah, the “New Woman,” food and fatness, and the novel’s contemporary reception are provided.
