NECROLOG

ANNE RICE

t would be no exaggeration to say that the modern vampire would not exist without Anne Rice. When her first book, , came out in 1976, the overwhelming cultural image of vampires was that of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: cloak, fangs, eastern European, an embodiment of evil, a dark intrusion into our modern world from an archaic, superstitious past. Rice’s vampire, Lestat, was, urbane, conflicted, adaptable, at home in the modern world, giving a radio interview in which he unfolds his life as an immortal, no , no , and no subculture of people choosing to live, or at least dress, as vampires. After , Rice, who has died aged 80 after complications from a stroke, went on to write more than 30 novels, and to defy her image as a genre novelist. As well as the 13 books in her “Vampire Chronicles”, the most recent of which, , was published in 2018, she wrote books based on her Christian faith, erotic fiction under the pseudonyms Anne Rampling and AN Roquelaure as well as other horror series featuring mummies and werewolves.