The Vampire Lestat

Within The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice alludes to some of the works of literature that influenced her conception of the vampire. Lestat thinks about and discusses these sources in the novel, which are also used as names of vampire bars. One of the oldest works of vampire literature that Rice references is John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and its character of “Lord Ruthven, the creation of Dr. Polidori” (500). Lord Ruthven is an original model of the romantic type of vampire, or “Gentleman Death in silk and lace” (229), as Lestat calls this figure. Rice also mentions the “magnificent and sensuous Countess Carmilla Karnstein” (500), which alludes to Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu. Unlike Polidori’s story, which tracks a relationship between men (one human, one vampire), the story of Carmilla is about the relationship between two women (one human, one vampire). Rice also mentions the most famous vampire, the “big ape of the vampires” (500), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Stoker’s vampire is a violent force of nature who preys on women and antagonizes men. Lestat is also often an aggressive, violent force, but he is more refined than Dracula.

The first novel in Anne Rice’s own vampire series is Interview with the Vampire, which came out in 1976, almost a decade before The Vampire Lestat. Louis, the narrator of Interview with the Vampire, introduces Lestat’s character. Louis describes how Lestat turned him into a vampire, and how Lestat also turned five-year-old Claudia into a vampire. Louis and Claudia decide to kill Lestat, mainly because he refuses to answer questions about the history of the vampires. After drugging and burning Lestat, Louis and Claudia discover the Theater of the Vampires, the coven led by Armand in Paris. The coven kills Claudia and her vampire companion Madeleine. Louis burns the members of the Theater of the Vampires while they are locked in their coffins. Afterwards, Armand becomes Louis’s companion for a while. Interview with the Vampire was turned into a film in 1994 and a TV series in 2022, as part of the AMC’s Immortal Universe.

In The Vampire Lestat, the reader learns that Lestat has been sworn to secrecy by Marius before meeting Louis. Furthermore, the members of the rock band that Lestat joins, Satan’s Night Out, have read Interview with the Vampire and think Lestat is merely performing as the character from Louis’s interview. It is only after Lestat reads Interview with the Vampire that he “ached to write [his] story for [Louis]” (16). Lestat’s autobiography is meant to explain everything Lestat withheld from his vampire children.