Carmilla, J. Sheridan Le Fanu
[The following is part of the prologue introduction to the 1872 Gothic novella, Carmilla, by the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu. It is one of the earliest known works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula by twenty-five years. Members of Priestley's Tales of the Unexpected are able to download a generic ePub version of this novella, made available by Free Spirit Books]
Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the manuscript illuminates.
This mysterious subject, he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man's collected papers.
As I publish the case, in these volumes, simply to interest the “laity,” I shall forestal the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and, after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learned Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates.”
I was anxious, on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.
