“People do not, as a rule, believe in Vampires!”

Nineteenth-Century Sexology and “The True Story of a Vampire” by Count Eric Stenbock

Abstract

The paper analyses the figure of the Hungarian vampire in the short story, “The True Story of a Vampire” (1894) by Count Eric Stenbock in its literary and ideological context. German-speaking Central Europe produced a number of new sexological categories and respective theories concerning same-sex desire in the nineteenth century. The English joined this discourse rather late in the 1890s. These new English texts on the science of same-sex desire, however, were virtually inaccessible or incomprehensible to laymen including homosexuals themselves. The English public’s understanding of same-sex desire came from the press coverage of scandalous trials and clandestine fiction. The paper, understanding Stenbock’s short story as his literary introspection regarding his sexuality, seeks to answer the question why Stenbock conceptualised his sexual desires as vampirism in light of his uncertainty of different controversial discourses on sexuality in the 1890s.