'Carmilla, The Companion Edition' Presents Le Fanu's Complete 1872 Gothic Novella, the Vampire Classic That Predates Dracula by Twenty-Five Years, with Discussion Questions Fenced Until the Final Meeting

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In 1872, R. Bentley & Son of London published In a Glass Darkly, the last book of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and closed it with a novella that had run the winter before in The Dark Blue magazine: the story of a lonely girl in a Styrian castle, the beautiful guest who arrives by a carriage accident at the gates, and the dreams that are not dreams. Carmilla predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by twenty-five years and stands at the head of the vampire tradition Stoker inherited. A new Companion Classics edition, Carmilla, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novella, 27,843 words, Prologue plus all sixteen chapters, unabridged, in the text of the 1872 first book edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #37174 (In a Glass Darkly, v. 3/3) and collated against an Internet Archive scan of the 1872 Bentley printing (located-chapter token agreement 0.951-0.978; a 102-probe test across all seventeen units matched at 91.2%, every miss resolving to scan noise).

The story itself needs no selling: Laura, motherless and desperately lonely in her father's schloss, loses the companion she has waited a year for, and gains another, installed by night under conditions nobody overhears. Carmilla is brilliant, languishing, and evasive; her affection is ardent and her past a blank; and as Laura's dreams darken and her health fails, every adult in the house finds a polite, scientific, or loving reason not to see what the reader has already assembled. Le Fanu, the great master of unease, builds his case the way a lawyer does, by accumulation, under reticence, and the novella's late revelations are left exactly where he put them: this edition's companion material fences them to its final meeting, and this release does the same.

Around the novella, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on the vampire before Dracula and on Le Fanu's quiet method; a Who's Who of ten entries, covering the schloss household, its visitors, and the dead doctor whose papers frame the tale; four explainers, covering the vampire tradition Le Fanu founded, the Hesselius frame and the book's Dark Blue serialization, Styria and the schloss world, and an account of how Le Fanu frightens; a short life of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; a reading schedule in four meetings sized to a novella; and thirty discussion questions, spoiler-fenced by meeting, so that the portrait, the true name, and the ending stay sealed until the novella itself opens them.

Alongside the book, Carmilla, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (26 pages, US Letter) for book clubs and reading groups: the four-meeting plan, the Who's Who and explainers in full, all thirty discussion questions arranged by meeting, and the Hesselius Case File, an evidence log in the spirit of the novella's own frame, tracking the dreams, the symptoms, and the guest's statements meeting by meeting, with every conclusion column left blank until the final meeting. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: [links pending parent]

Carmilla, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: [links pending parent], and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text is public domain worldwide (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu died in 1873). The Dark Blue serialization's illustrations are not part of the 1872 book witness and are not reproduced in this edition, the edition claims no illustrations it does not contain; its cover is an original painting made for this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any film or stage adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Carmilla, The Companion Edition, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first book edition (In a Glass Darkly, R. Bentley & Son, London, 1872; serialized in The Dark Blue, 1871-72), via Project Gutenberg eBook #37174, collated against an IA scan of the 1872 Bentley printing; Prologue + 16 chapters; 27,843 words; no illustrations reproduced (see note above); interior proof 134 pages, 6 x 9 in.