Carmilla: The Lesbian Vampire Novel That Invented Your Favorite Tropes
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We are currently surviving, not thriving, before we dive into Sarah J Maas' House of Flame and Shadow. This means we're discussing other book-ish topics while we prepare our analysis, and discuss topics that bring us joy. And today, that's Carmilla.
Before Dracula. Before Edward Cullen. Before TikTok's favorite romantasy vampire boyfriends — there was Carmilla. In this episode of Book Talk for BookTok, Jac and Amy dig into Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 gothic novella Carmilla, the original sapphic vampire story that predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by 26 years and quietly shaped the entire vampire literature genre as we know it today.
We're talking queer literature history, gothic horror, lesbian vampire tropes, and how Carmilla laid the groundwork for everything from Interview with the Vampire to modern romantasy. If you love book podcasts, literary analysis, classic literature deep dives, or you're a romantasy reader curious where your favorite vampire tropes actually came from — this episode is for you.
Carmilla isn't just an early entry in vampire fiction — it's foundational queer literature. Long before "sapphic fiction" was a BookTok shelf category, Le Fanu was writing one of the first literary depictions of female desire between women, wrapped in gothic atmosphere and horror. Understanding Carmilla means understanding where so many of our favorite tropes — the seductive vampire, the blurred line between desire and danger, the slow-burn obsession — actually come from.
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