A carriage overturns outside a lonely schloss in Styria, and a beautiful stranger is left behind to convalesce with the daughter of the house. Le Fanu published Carmilla twenty-five years before Dracula, and Stoker read it carefully: the vampire, the sceptical doctor, the folklore hunted through old records — all of it starts here. The difference is that Le Fanu's monster is loved before she is feared. Fifty-six plates by Caspar David Friedrich and Lovis Corinth carry the tale through moonlit ruins, mountain storms and dark water.
