Vampire City (original: “La Ville-Vampire”) was written by Paul Féval. It’s known that Vampire City was published in 1867, most likely as a roman feuilleton, but no trace of the 1867 publication has been discovered by scholars; the second edition of Vampire City was published as in Le Moniteur Universal (Sept. 12-Oct. 25, 1874). Féval (1816-1875) was a popular French author of swashbucklers, historical novels, and crime thrillers.

Vampire City is about Anne Ward, “the woman was to become famous as Anne [sic] Radcliffe.” Ann Radcliffe was the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. She was the most popular British author of the 1790s and is widely seen as the inventor of the Gothic (see: The Gothic) novel. In Vampire City Anne’s friends Ned Barton and Cornelia de Witt make the mistake of traveling to the Continent with Barton’s tutor, Otto Goetzi. Unbeknownst to Barton and de Witt, Goetzi is a vampire, and through his schemes Barton is badly wounded and he and Cornelia are abducted. Radcliffe has an ominous dream in which she sees their tombs. She then receives a troubling series of letters from Barton and de Witt. Ann concludes that they are in great danger and takes off for the Continent, accompanied by the Radcliffes’ family servant, Grey Jack. Ann frees Barton and the pair pursue Goetzi to the city of Selene, which is a city inhabited by nothing but vampires. Radcliffe and Barton kill Goetzi and leave Selene, but while finding Cornelia they encounter further vampires, including one of Goetzi’s doubles. Radcliffe and the others are trapped by the vampires and are about to be killed when Radcliffe wakes up. She hasn’t been dreaming, exactly, but she has been having a dream vision of the peril facing Ned and Cornelia. She then goes in search of them and finds them near Belgrade, but she is unable to locate Selene itself.

Vampire City is a parody of the Gothic genre. The novel is horror mixed with light comedy and a send-up of the Gothics and the English. Féval has fun with a number of Gothic clichés while also tweaking the English and the Irish. Like many mid-century authors Féval’s work was widely plagiarized by English publishers in the 1860s and 1870s. Féval further felt that George W. M. Reynolds’ The Mysteries of London (1845-1855) was a lift of Féval’s own The Mysteries of London (which was itself heavily influenced by Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris). So Féval’s mockery of the English in Vampire City has an edge, and the dislike Féval felt for the English is communicated to the reader through the novel.

Vampire City is an entertaining trifle. Féval’s parody of the Gothic is spot-on, and he does not lapse into exaggeration, instead going for an accurate imitation of the Gothic style and plot clichés. Féval gets off some good lines at the expense of the English, and Vampire City generally gives off the air of having been fun to write, although Vampire City does not exceed the limits of parody and become a satire or anything more remarkable.

The modern reader will be struck, yet again, by how much the modern conception of the vampire has been shaped by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Féval, in Vampire City, presents vampires as being dissimilar to Stoker’s vampires in abilities and personalities. Like Stoker, Féval drew on Dom Augustine Calmet’s Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, Etc. (original: Traité sur les Apparitions des Esprits, et sur les Vampires, 1746), a sober debunking of then-rampant rumors of the existence of vampires, but Féval took different things from Calmet than Stoker did and added his own elements. Féval’s vampires absorb their victims and can duplicate themselves and change shape, so that an entire family or even village can be one collective vampire. Each one of Féval’s vampires is a “collective” (“chaque vampire est un groupe”).¹ And the deadliest weapon to use against vampires, in Vampire City, is not holy water but the ashes of another vampire, which explodes those undead it touches.

Féval’s Ann Radcliffe is a departure from the standard put-upon and victimized Gothic heroine. In the novel Radcliffe is assertive and proactive in hunting the vampires, and if she does not personally kill them it is through her actions that they are killed. In this respect the Ann Radcliffe of Vampire City is an anticipation of the female vampire slayers of twentieth and twenty-first century horror fiction and television.

Too, “at the time of its first publication, the hybrid horror/comedy genre to which Vampire City belongs hardly existed, and Féval may be credited with its invention.”²

Lastly, it should be noted that much of the real Ann Radcliffe’s life is unknown. Little was written about her during her lifetime. Féval was having fun with his portrayal of her, but he knew exactly as much as anyone else did (or does) about what Radcliffe’s life was really like.

William Bradley Holley, “Fantastic Encounters: Identity, Belief, and the Supernatural in Works by Paul Féval.” PhD diss., University of Alabama, 2011.

¹ Qtd. in Erik Butler, Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732-1933 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), 47.

² Brian Stableford, “Introduction,” in Vampire City (Tarzana, CA: Black Coats Press, 2003), ii.