Published in the same year as Dracula, an overlooked nineteenth-century Gothic novel centered around a queer, feminist vampire that challenged the norms of Victorian society

In 1897, the same year Dracula by Bram Stoker was published, Florence Marryat released The Blood of the Vampire, featuring a protagonist ahead of her time: a female, bisexual, biracial, psychic (feeding off life force rather than blood) vampire. In contrast to Stoker's predatory vampire, Marryat's vampire is a gentle and caring young woman who searches for love but is instead accused of killing those who get too close. Marryat - who wrote dozens of works of "sensation fiction", a genre akin to thrillers - implores readers to sympathize with rather than demonize the vampire, and by extension the communities she is part of, and to understand the intricacies of her identity and the societal norms that oppress her. In this vampire novel steeped in the New Woman feminist ideology of the late Victorian era, Marryat issues a strong critique of her generation's gender norms, racism, and medical discrimination in clear and engaging prose accessible to the everyday general reader, a contrast to the verbose and didactic writing of her contemporaries. Marryat's thrilling plots about women who rejected the traditional notions of Victorian womanhood were both transgressive and widely popular, reviled and celebrated during her time, and this edition will introduce readers to an overlooked influence on the vampire genre.

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Florence Marryat (1833-1899) was an actress and an author of close to seventy novels, several short story collections, plays, newspaper articles, and works of nonfiction. Scholars believe with reasonable certainty that Marryat was born in 1833, but like many Victorian women writers who were not appreciated during their lifetime, some of her history cannot be confirmed. The daughter of the famous maritime novelist Captain Frederick Marryat, she wrote works of "sensation fiction," a genre of her time akin to thrillers. Publishing her first novel, Love's Conflict, in 1865, the English
writer's works were widely popular and often explored social topics considered taboo during her lifetime, such as domestic abuse, feminism, racism, and sexuality. Marryat not only wrote about controversial women, but she was also one herself: Married and divorced twice, she lived with
other men out of wedlock, was accused of adultery, supported herself financially without a husband, and involved herself with social movements such as spiritualism, among other minor societal transgressions. Plagued with chronic health issues her entire life, Marryat died from pneumonia in 1899, the same year her final three novels were published.

Rachel Stewart (introduction) is a graduate teaching associate at Ohio State University studying Victorian popular fiction and culture, specializing in horror, the Gothic, and vampires. Stewart is actively engaged in the recovery of work by overlooked female Victorian authors of popular fiction, including Florence Marryat and has worked extensively with Marryat's archives of work.