Lesbian vampires

A new edition of Dracula has arrived to darken an otherwise bright day in London.

This is an improvement on most days in the past few months when a bright book has been needed to break through the dark.

Any reader of these blogs who has been following Mary Beard on early lesbianism will be pleased to see recognition in Dracula's Capuchin Classics foreword for a 'dreamy tale of Lesbian vampires', Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel Carmilla.

This fine work predated Bram Stoker's oeuvre by a quarter of a century - and became  the source of various 'sexploitation' movies in more open-minded years.

One of Mary's 'commenters', my old friend Oliver Nicholson, has pointed out that the OED gives no instance of Lesbian or Lesbianism in its modern English sense earlier than 1870.

It was possible for a respectable family in Willesden as late as 1898 (presumably admirers of Catullus, 'tenderest of Roman poets') to name their daughter Lesbia; she grew up to be Lesbia Scott, wife of a vicar of Chagford and author of an All Saints; Day hymn of great charm, "I sing a song of the saints of God".

Thankyou for that, Oliver, as ever.

I wonder how many girls in Chagford in the 1870s were christened Carmilla.

Comments

[Chris Gillibrand]

Apparently, the residents of Lesbos are presently suing the Greek Gay and Lesbian Association over the appropriation of the name.

[Andrew Kenneally]

This piece is an outrageous glorification of smut. A corruption from within of all that is great about the experiment that is Western civilisation. You should be ashamed of yourself. The sole and obvious reason lesbianism wasn't referred to before 1870 is that is works like those you have mentioned which gave birth to the phenomenon. LIkewise vampires.