Works · Novella · 1871

Carmilla

First appeared Dec 1871 – Mar 1872 in The Dark Blue

Nocturne plate · illustration (AI-generated, 2026)

Laura, the daughter of an English father and a Styrian mother, is raised in a remote Styrian castle and is lonely until a carriage accident leaves a mysterious girl of her own age, Carmilla, in her father’s care. The two grow intensely close. In the villages nearby, peasants are dying of a wasting illness, Laura’s dreams turn strange, and Carmilla keeps odd hours and slips away from hymns. An old general whose ward has died in the same fashion arrives with a theory, and a trail that leads to the ruined chapel of the extinct Karnstein family.

Yes, very—a cruel love—strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.

Chapter 6 (A Very Strange Agony). Checked against Project Gutenberg ebook #10007 (Gutenberg #10007 text (the In a Glass Darkly form, with the Hesselius prologue))

The publication record

Carmilla

Sheridan Le Fanu

Novella

Serial Dec 1871 – Mar 1872 The Dark Blue Four monthly instalments: December 1871 (vol. 2, no. 10, from p. 434), January 1872, February 1872 and, with the ‘Conclusion’, March 1872 (vol. 3, no. 13). Illustrated; the scanned February and March numbers credit D. H. Friston, and the Victorian Web credits M. Fitzgerald for the 1871-72 magazine edition. [1][2][3][4][5]
Volume, 3 vols 1872 Richard Bentley & Son, London Reprinted in In a Glass Darkly, 3 vols (Bentley, 1872), with a prologue in which Dr Martin Hesselius annotates the narrative. [6][7]

Carmilla, The Dark Blue 1872 D. H. Friston (1820-1906), 1872. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sheridan Le Fanu, 1814–1873. Carmilla first appeared when Sheridan Le Fanu was 57.

Facts

Carmilla ran in four instalments of The Dark Blue, a short-lived monthly magazine: December 1871 (opening on page 434), January 1872 and February 1872 in volume 2, and March 1872 in volume 3, where it closes with a chapter headed ‘Conclusion’.[1][2][3][4]
In the magazine the tale begins directly at ‘Chapter I. An Early Fright’ with no mention of Dr Hesselius in any of the four scanned numbers; the Hesselius prologue is the framing added when the story was reprinted in In a Glass Darkly (3 vols, Bentley, 1872).[1][4][6]
The Gutenberg text keeps the prologue and sixteen chapters, from ‘An Early Fright’ to ‘Conclusion’; in chapter 6 the title character speaks the line ‘Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.’[7]
The Victorian Web calls Carmilla ‘one of the sources of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)’, and the Irish Times says it ‘greatly influenced’ Stoker and predates Dracula by some 25 years.[6][8]

Setting

Undated; told as the narrator’s recollection of events some years earlier[7]

a lonely schloss in Styria
the ruined village of Karnstein
the Karnstein chapel

Themes

Notes on dates 2 notes on disputed dates and attribution

Victorian Web (Cooke) calls In a Glass Darkly ‘posthumous’; Le Fanu died on 7 February 1873 (DNB) and the three volumes are dated 1872, so the book appeared in his lifetime.
Dating the work: the serial ran December 1871 to March 1872 and the book is dated 1872. The anchor year follows the first appearance, 1871. Day of issue of each Dark Blue number is not given in the scans’ front matter, so months are shown.

Threads

Threads in

In the tradition of The Vampyre 1819
Sam George traces the line of aristocratic vampires from Polidori’s Lord Ruthven and names Le Fanu’s Countess Mircalla Karnstein among those who follow him; a place in that tradition, not a documented borrowing from The Vampyre.[9]

Threads out

Leads to Dracula 1897
The Victorian Web calls Carmilla ‘one of the sources of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, and Franck and Beresford report that Stoker’s 1890 notes set the story in Styria, the setting of Carmilla (and that the Styrian vampiress of ‘Dracula’s Guest’ owes much to it, per Auerbach).[6][10][8]

Contemporaries

Works on the timeline that first appeared within three years of 1871, and the other writers alive when Carmilla appeared (ages computed from sourced dates).