Carmilla (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu)

Editing for this request to add that Carmilla isn’t a love story, and as it is on the page it’s pretty messed up. But it’s also in many ways the blueprint for the lesbian vampire and has inspired much more romantic adaptations, and I just found it pretty fascinating as an older “depiction” of queerness and the precursor to a lot of queer horror. This version is edited by Carmen Maria Machado, and I’ve heard it’s really great and handles the problems and complexities well.

What’s tough about Carmilla is you want it to be romantic but Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu wants you to think that lesbians are scary. And that’s a really interesting tension to hold while reading. There’s also a kind of fascinating correlation I never noticed before between vampirism and chronic illness, with disability and queerness both as a sort of contagion. I don’t know if anyone’s ever written about Carmilla and hysteria, but I imagine there’s a lot to work with.