The Female Vampire in Hispanic Literature : A Critical Anthology of Turn-of-the-Twentieth Century Gothic-Inspired Tales

This book exposes how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Hispanic authors broke from European and American Gothic models to contend with their own anxieties over modernity and rising first-wave feminisms. The result was a trend of sympathetic female vampires, predating comparable Anglo and European representations by several decades. In its analysis of the female vampire in Hispanic literature, the critical introduction also traces the Gothic’s origins and developments in Latin America and Spain, presenting a working theory of Gothic traditions in the form of a transhispanic literary phenomenon. The tales compiled in the collection include Leopoldo Lugones’s ‘The Female Vampire’ (1899), Clemente Palma’s ‘The White Farmhouse’ (1904), Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent’s ‘Mr. Cadaver and Miss Vampire’ (1910), Carmen de Burgos’s The Cold Woman (1922), and Horacio Quiroga’s ‘The Vampire’ (1927). Only two of these tales have been previously been translated into English, and each appears here for the first time with scholarly annotations and accompanying analysis.

Exploring Spain and Latin America’s transhispanic Gothic connection.

This book exposes how Hispanic authors at the turn of the twentieth century broke from European and American Gothic models to contend with their anxieties over modernity and rising first-wave feminisms. The result was a trend of sympathetic female vampire characters, predating comparable Anglo and European representations by several decades. 

In its analysis of the female vampire in Hispanic literature, this critical introduction also traces the Gothic’s origins and developments in Latin America and Spain, presenting a working theory of Gothic traditions in the form of a transhispanic literary phenomenon. The tales compiled in this collection include Leopoldo Lugones’s “The Female Vampire” (1899), Clemente Palma’s “The White Farmhouse” (1904), Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent’s “Mr. Cadaver and Miss Vampire” (1910), Carmen de Burgos’s “The Cold Woman” (1922), and Horacio Quiroga’s “The Vampire” (1927). All but two of these tales are translated into English for the first time, and all appear alongside scholarly annotations and accompanying analysis.