Freda Warrington is a British author, known for her epic fantasy, vampire and supernatural novels. [1]
Born in Leicester, Warrington grew up in Leicestershire. Early influences included Hammer horror films and classic vampire novels like Bram Stoker's Dracula and J.S. Le Fanu's Camilla. [2] She was also inspired by local history and the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. [3]
After completing high school, Warrington trained at the Loughborough College of Art and Design, and afterward held a job at the Medical Illustration Department of Leicester Royal Infirmary. She eventually moved to full-time writing, pursuing a love she had had since childhood. In addition to her writing, Warrington works part-time in the Charnwood Forest. [4]
Four of her novels (Dark Cathedral, Pagan Moon, Dracula the Undead , and The Amber Citadel) have been nominated for the British Fantasy Society's Best Novel award. Dracula the Undead won the Dracula Society's 1997 Children of the Night Award. [5] Her novel, Elfland, won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award in the Fantasy Novel category for 2009. [6] Warrington has also seen numerous short stories published in anthologies and magazines.
Some of her books are set in Leicestershire, such as the Aetherial Tales series, depicting the lives, loves and adventures of magical people living hidden in this region, passing for - and sharing many cultural traits with - ordinary English people. [7]
Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 25 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in film and other media.
Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and more recent examples such as Moto Hagio's series The Poe Clan (1972–1976) and Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) proving influential.
Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. He is interested in film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the BSFA award.
The Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman—named after Anno Dracula, the series' first novel—is a work of fantasy depicting an alternate history in which the heroes of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula fail to stop Count Dracula's conquest of Britain, resulting in a world where vampires are common and increasingly dominant in society. While Dracula is a central figure in the events of the series, he is a minor character in the books and usually appears in only a few climactic pages of each book. While many of the characters from Newman's Diogenes Club stories appear in the Anno Dracula novels, they are not the same as the ones in those stories, nor is the Diogenes Club itself the same.
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. She also wrote a children's picture book, and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 .
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character and the main female character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.
Vampires are fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The concept of the Vampire has been depicted by Marvel to varying degrees of significance. Bearing a strong resemblance to their literary counterparts, Marvel vampires are mostly an undead subspecies of humans that sustain their immortality and paranormal power by drinking the blood of living humans. Unlike most other depictions of the creature, these vampires have their roots in both the supernatural and biology. Victims are converted to vampirism via enzymes carried in the vampire's saliva, which cause reanimation once introduced into the bloodstream during feedings.
Terri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
Vampire films have been a staple in world cinema since the era of silent films, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in films throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. Running a distant second are adaptations of the 1872 novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. By 2005, the Dracula character had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character except Sherlock Holmes.
The Brides of Dracula are fictional characters in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. They are three seductive vampire "sisters" who reside with Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, where they entice men with their beauty and charm, and then proceed to feed upon them. Dracula provides them with victims to devour, mainly implied to be infants.
Vampires are frequently represented in popular culture across various forms of media, including appearances in ballet, films, literature, music, opera, theatre, paintings, and video games.
Robert Maxwell Hood is an Australian writer and editor recognised as one of Australia's leading horror writers, although his work frequently crosses genre boundaries into science fiction, fantasy and crime.
Joseph Nassise is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling American urban fantasy writer and the author of more than sixty novels. His debut novel, Riverwatch, was nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He is the author of the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle, the Great Undead War series, as well as several books for Gold Eagle's Rogue Angel line. His work has been translated into German, Russian, Polish Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. Nassise served as the president of the Horror Writers Association from 2002 to 2005 and a Trustee of the same from 2008 to 2010.
Tony Shillitoe is an Australian fantasy writer.
Del Howison is an American horror author, editor and actor.
M Is for Magic is a collection of child-friendly short fiction by Neil Gaiman.
Sarah Elizabeth Monette is an American novelist and short story writer, mostly in the genres of fantasy and horror. Under the name Katherine Addison, she published the fantasy novel The Goblin Emperor, which received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
Dracula: The Dark Prince is a 2013 American fantasy horror film directed by Pearry Reginald Teo and written by Nicole Jones-Dion and Steven Paul. The film stars Luke Roberts, Jon Voight, Kelly Wenham and Ben Robson. Dracula: The Dark Prince is an (R) Rated film due to some violence and Sexuality/Nudity. The film was shot in Romania and was released on October 15, 2013.
The World of Hammer is a British television documentary series created and written by Robert Sidaway and Ashley Sidaway, and produced by Robert Sidaway.