The Art of Carmilla: Restoring the Gothic Vision of Le Fanu's Erotic Vampire Classic

Dante Remy |

When Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla first appeared in serialized form in The Dark Blue magazine between December 1871 and March 1872, it quietly introduced one of literature’s most enigmatic and enduring vampire figures. Preceding Dracula by over two decades, Carmilla carved out a space for the seductive female vampire, whose predatory love operates within the uncanny landscapes of the Gothic tradition. While Le Fanu’s haunting narrative has long enjoyed literary acclaim, few readers realize that it was originally accompanied by three illustrations—images that subtly shaped the story’s reception at the time but have remained all but forgotten for nearly 150 years.

Now, for the first time, these illustrations have been reunited in Carmilla: Restored Edition, published by Black Fern, an imprint of Erosetti Press (2024). This edition not only digitally restores the original engravings by David Henry Friston and Michael Fitzgerald but presents them alongside a curated selection of Gothic and erotic art from the same period. The result is a lush, immersive reading experience that resurrects the novella’s visual history and amplifies its psycho-sexual themes.

The Lost Illustrations of Carmilla

Le Fanu’s Carmilla was serialized in five monthly installments in The Dark Blue, a literary magazine known for its Gothic sensibilities and avant-garde illustrations. Though often overlooked in later reprints, the original serial included three illustrations that appeared at pivotal moments in the text. Two of these were the work of Michael Fitzgerald, a lesser-known illustrator whose pen-and-ink style aligned with the emerging Symbolist movement. The third was by David Henry Friston, best remembered today for his illustrations in the first edition of Dracula (1897). Their collaborative visual interpretation of Carmilla remains one of the most haunting artistic contributions to vampire literature.

As I have noted in the forward to the Restored Edition note, these illustrations were never published together in book form until now. The restoration involved sourcing rare, corrupted copies of The Dark Blue, repairing damaged lines, and digitally reviving the fine crosshatching and shadow work that gave these images their uncanny depth (Black Fern, Carmilla: Restored Edition, 2024).

The Illustrations: Three Moments of Dread and Desire

Each of the three illustrations captures a key turning point in Laura’s descent into Carmilla’s world—points where seduction and terror become indistinguishable. These images do more than depict the events of the story; they evoke its underlying tensions: eroticism cloaked in horror, and love perverted by vampiric hunger.

"Funeral" by Michael Fitzgerald (1872)

“As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees, a funeral passed us by.”

Michael Fitzgerald’s illustration, Funeral, marks the moment in the story when Laura and Carmilla sit together in the castle gardens, witnessing the passage of a funeral procession. The villagers carry the coffin of a young peasant girl who has died under mysterious circumstances—her wasting illness marked by nightmares of a spectral visitant. This is one of several deaths that foreshadow Laura’s own fate.

In the narrative, this quiet, somber event unfolds with an eerie stillness. Yet, it is Carmilla’s reaction that draws attention. She is visibly disturbed, not by sorrow or reverence, but by anger and contempt. When Laura stands and joins the mourners’ hymn, Carmilla covers her ears and declares the song an unbearable cacophony. “You pierce my ears,” she protests, before denouncing funerals as pointless “fuss.” In Gothic tradition, the vampire fears sacred rites and the symbols of Christian burial, and Carmilla’s outburst betrays her true nature.

Fitzgerald’s rendering captures the contrast between the serene ritual of the villagers and Carmilla’s private turmoil. The mourners move in solemn procession through the shaded glade, their bowed heads forming a silent chorus of grief. In the foreground, Laura appears contemplative, while Carmilla’s posture suggests tension, her face turned away, isolated in her defiance. The mist drifting across the ground, a visual hallmark of Gothic imagery, suggests both the literal fog of the Styrian countryside and the metaphorical fog clouding Laura’s understanding of Carmilla.

The funeral scene encapsulates the novella’s themes of repressed knowledge and impending doom, with Fitzgerald’s careful composition reflecting the tension between innocence and corruption, reverence and desecration.

"Laura in Bed" David Henry Friston (1872)

"I had a dream of something black coming round my bed..."

Friston’s illustration, Laura in Bed, presents one of the story’s most haunting moments—Laura’s eerie, hallucinatory experience during the night. This occurs as Laura begins to succumb to Carmilla’s predation, her strength waning and her dreams growing more disturbing.

In this scene, Laura awakens to what she believes is a nightmare. She describes a vague, oppressive presence creeping around her bed. “I had a dream of something black coming round my bed,” she recounts, capturing both the surreal quality of the experience and her growing fear. The image of this shadowy force, indistinct and formless, prefigures Carmilla’s vampiric visitations, where her attacks leave no physical wounds at first, only an unexplained exhaustion and dread.

Friston’s illustration emphasizes the psychological terror of the moment. Laura lies in bed, her eyes wide with terror, as a black shape looms at the edge of her mattress. The form is deliberately ambiguous—neither clearly human nor animal—evoking the shapeshifting lore of vampires in European folklore, where they often appear as shadows, mists, or predatory animals. The stark interplay of light and shadow creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, with Laura isolated in the small pool of light, while darkness presses in on all sides.

This moment marks the transition from Laura’s innocent affection for Carmilla to an unconscious recognition of the danger she faces. Friston captures the shift from Gothic romance to psychological horror, where the boundary between dream and reality begins to erode.

"Carmilla" by David Henry Friston (1872)

"I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating..."

Friston’s second illustration, titled simply Carmilla, is the most iconic and reproduced of the three orginal illustrations. It accompanies one of the novella’s climactic revelations. Here, Laura witnesses—or dreams she witnesses—a horrific vision of Carmilla’s true nature. She describes seeing a dark, amorphous shape creeping up over her bed, spreading itself across her throat, and swelling into a great, palpitating mass.

This ghastly description comes after Laura has become increasingly debilitated. Her dreams have grown more vivid, and her sense of reality is slipping away. In this vision, the vampire’s predation is finally depicted in its monstrous form. Gone is the beautiful, languid Carmilla; in her place is an undulating shape that suggests something both animalistic and parasitic.

Friston’s illustration distills this moment into a tableau of Gothic horror. The darkness of the figure contrasts with Laura’s pale, partially nude, defenseless body, drawing the viewer’s eye to the point of contact at her throat—the site of both vampiric feeding and erotic intimacy. The “palpitating” mass that Le Fanu describes becomes a visual manifestation of Carmilla’s suppressed monstrousness, hinting at the grotesque reality beneath her beautiful exterior.

This scene in the novella marks the beginning of Laura’s awakening to the truth of Carmilla’s identity and the mortal danger she faces. Friston’s depiction echoes the era’s fascination with the dual nature of the vampire as both alluring and abject. As Georg Müller observes in Vampires and the Visual Imagination (2020), late 19th-century vampire iconography often dwelled on the transformation from seductress to predator, capturing the horror of desire turned fatal.

Restoring the Gothic Erotic Aesthetic

The Restored Edition does more than present the original illustrations; it places them within a broader visual context, assembling a gallery of Gothic and erotic art from the same period. In curating the visual gallery that accompanies Carmilla, I was faced a delicate task: selecting artwork that would not only enhance the reader’s experience but also deepen the thematic resonance of Le Fanu’s novella. While a vast body of Gothic and erotic artwork was considered, only a select few were ultimately included. The goal was not to overwhelm the text with unrelated images, but to curate an exhibition that would illuminate Carmilla’s atmosphere of death, seduction, and taboo desire.

Among the chosen artists, three stand out for their iconic status and the controversy that still surrounds their work: Martin van Maele, Louis Brougham, and Charles Allan Gilbert. Each of these artists was selected because their work speaks directly to Carmilla’s central preoccupations—erotic control, hidden identities, and the inescapability of death. Their art is provocative, layered, and reflective of the shifting moral anxieties that defined the Gothic imagination at the turn of the 20th century.

Martin van Maele: The Master of Erotic Subversion

Martin van Maele (born Maurice François Alfred Martin van Miële, 1863–1926) is arguably one of the most provocative illustrators of fin-de-siècle Europe. Best known for his illustrations of erotic literature—often clandestinely published—van Maele’s work walks the fine line between decadent sensuality and outright pornography. His precise, almost clinical linework, paired with a sense of playfulness, makes his work at once shocking and darkly humorous.

In Carmilla: Restored Edition, van Maele’s illustrations feature prominently:

• La Comtesse au fouet (1926),

• La Grande Danse macabre des vifs (1905),

• and Of Crime and Criminals (1908).

These images were chosen not simply for their eroticism but for how they resonate with Carmilla’s character: a noblewoman who dominates, seduces, and destroys. La Comtesse au fouet, in particular, presents an image of aristocratic female power that is simultaneously alluring and terrifying. It captures the aspect of Carmilla as both a lover and a predator—a theme at the very heart of Le Fanu’s novella.

Van Maele’s La Grande Danse macabre des vifs takes the medieval dance of death motif and injects it with eroticism and black humor. This perfectly complements the Gothic undertones of Carmilla, where the seductions of the vampire are laced with inevitability and doom. His ability to render death as a macabre seduction underscores the vampiric themes in Le Fanu’s work, where eroticism and mortality are hopelessly entwined.

Van Maele’s inclusion in this edition was not without controversy. His illustrations were often banned or censored in his time, and even now, his frank depictions of sexuality can unsettle modern audiences. Yet it is precisely this fearless confrontation with taboo that makes van Maele essential to understanding Carmilla’s complex erotic charge.

Louis Brougham: The Femme Fatale as Monster

Louis Brougham’s La Femme Chauve-Souris (c. 1890), or The Bat Woman, is another striking inclusion. Brougham is a relatively obscure figure in the history of fin-de-siècle art, yet this singular image has garnered significant attention for its provocative symbolism. The woman depicted in bat-winged garb—part masquerade, part monstrous hybrid—stands as a literal personification of the vampire myth. Her costume suggests both allure and danger, the bat wings highlighting her connection to the nocturnal and the supernatural.

Brougham’s Bat Woman embodies the duality of Carmilla herself. Outwardly beautiful and seductive, Carmilla masks her predatory nature beneath layers of charm and cultivated innocence. The image plays with the trope of the masked woman, a common device in decadent art, representing hidden desires and concealed threats. In the Gothic tradition, as scholars like Christine Murray argue in Decadent Illustration and the Female Vampire (2014), the masked female figure is often used to symbolize anxieties about women’s growing autonomy and power. Brougham’s illustration plays directly into these fears—casting woman not as victim, but as predator.

The decision to include La Femme Chauve-Souris was deliberate. While many other images of vampires and bat-women exist, few so effectively capture the unsettling power dynamics of Carmilla’s seduction. Brougham’s work was included for its boldness, its ability to simultaneously attract and repel, and its uncanny encapsulation of the story’s themes.

Charles Allan Gilbert: The Illusion of Beauty and Death

Charles Allan Gilbert (1873–1929) is best known for his memento mori illustration All is Vanity (1892), included in Carmilla: Restored Edition. At first glance, the image shows a woman seated at her vanity, admiring herself in a mirror. But when viewed from a distance, the composition forms the shape of a human skull. This double image encapsulates the Victorian obsession with death and beauty—the idea that beneath the surface glamour lies the rot of mortality.

In Le Fanu’s novella, Carmilla’s beauty is seductive, but it masks the inevitability of death. Laura is drawn in by Carmilla’s charm, her seeming vulnerability, and her tender affection. But this intimacy leads not to romantic fulfillment, but to slow destruction. Gilbert’s All is Vanity speaks to this experience: the realization that what appears beautiful and life-giving is, in fact, hollowed out by death.

Gilbert’s image was included over many other memento mori works because of its enduring power and subtlety. While many similar pieces rely on overt morbidity, All is Vanity offers a quiet, creeping realization—the same realization that dawns on Laura as she uncovers Carmilla’s true nature. The duality of life and death, beauty and decay, is central to both the image and the novella.

Other Artists Included in the Edition

In addition to the restored original illustrations and the more controversial works by Martin van Maele, Louis Brougham, and Charles Allan Gilbert, Carmilla: Restored Edition features a carefully curated selection of Gothic and decadent artwork by other notable artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them is Nelly Littlehale Umbstaetter Lindsay, whose series This Shrine (1874) graces the edition’s cover, title page, and interior. Lindsay’s refined line work and ethereal imagery establish a tone of reverence tinged with melancholy, drawing the reader into Laura’s solitary world before Carmilla’s arrival. Her quiet, introspective female figures evoke themes of longing, innocence, and loss, framing the novella as both a personal tragedy and a meditation on desire. These pieces were chosen for their subtle ability to evoke the emotional isolation and yearning at the heart of Laura’s narrative, lending a delicate, haunting beauty to the opening pages.

Other featured works deepen the story’s exploration of eroticism and mortality. Philip Burne-Jones’ iconic painting The Vampire (1897) depicts a femme fatale bending over her pale, lifeless victim. While Burne-Jones’ vampire preys on a man, the image resonates with Carmilla’s predation, embodying the femme fatale archetype that haunted the Victorian imagination. Similarly, Antoine Penot’s Trilogie érotique (1905) and Abandon (c. 1890) present scenes of erotic surrender and transgression. Penot’s figures, languid and exposed, reflect the psychological state of Laura, who finds herself both entranced by Carmilla’s attentions and unable to resist them. These works were chosen for their emphasis on power dynamics and the sensual pleasure laced with danger that defines Le Fanu’s vampire. Together, they reinforce the novella’s central tension between eroticism and annihilation.

Rounding out the selection are works that highlight themes of deception, vanity, and hidden identities. Frederik Kaemmerer’s Woman in a Masquerade Costume Looking in a Mirror (1892) offers a symbolic reflection on Carmilla’s duplicitous nature—her mask of innocence concealing monstrous intent. Likewise, C. Glibert’s All is Vanity (1892), in which a woman’s vanity transforms into a memento mori, perfectly captures the novella’s preoccupation with the fleeting nature of beauty and the ever-present shadow of death. Paul Grabwinkler’s illustration from Die Muskete (1928), though more playful in tone, provides a modern echo of Gothic eroticism, bridging the fin-de-siècle sensibilities of Carmilla with the libertine decadence of the Weimar era. Each of these works was carefully selected to enrich the text’s atmosphere, emphasizing the psychological complexity and the fatal allure that make Carmilla an enduring masterpiece of Gothic literature.

A Visual Resurrection

Carmilla: Restored Edition is both a literary restoration and an artistic resurrection. For the first time, readers encounter Le Fanu’s text as it was first imagined by its illustrators—a world of shadowed forests, decaying castles, and intimate terror. By reuniting Friston and Fitzgerald’s original illustrations and presenting them within a gallery of Gothic eroticism, this Black Fern publication restores Carmilla’s place not only as a landmark of vampire fiction but as a key text in the visual culture of the Gothic.

Carmilla, Restored Edition from Black Fern.

The Restored Edition invites readers to linger over the details: the fine line work of Friston’s bedroom seduction, the symbolic solemnity of Fitzgerald’s funeral scene, and the claustrophobic embrace of Carmilla’s whispered promise. These images reveal the psycho-sexual complexities at the heart of the story, reminding us that Gothic terror often wears the face of love.

In bringing together text and image, Le Fanu’s Carmilla emerges anew—a story of forbidden love, erotic possession, and the eternal return of the repressed. As Laura herself reflects in the novella, “You are mine, you shall be mine”—a line that echoes not only Carmilla’s obsessive claim over Laura but the enduring grip of this haunting tale over readers for more than 150 years.

Dante Remy ©️2025

Explore Carmilla, Restored Edition exclusively from Black Fern, an imprint of Erosetti Press. Available in hardcover and paperback here and at Amazon.