Emily Gerard

(Jane) Emily Gerard (7 May 1849 – 11 January 1905) was a Scottish 19th-century author best known for the influence her collections of Transylvanian folklore had on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.

[1] The two sisters Dorothea and Emily became active participants in the British literary community in the latter half of the 19th century, both working collaboratively and independently.

[1] As Dorothea (Gerard) Longard de Longgarde (1855–1915), arguably the more successful and certainly the more prolific novelist of the two, had married an Austro-Hungarian officer, she spent much of her subsequent life in Austria.

[6] Her book The Land Beyond the Forest (1890) and essay "Transylvania Superstitions" is credited with inspiring Bram Stoker to write Dracula.

Gerard writes:More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell.

In very obstinate cases of vampirism it is recommended to cut off the head, and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic, or to extract the heart and burn it, strewing its ashes over the grave.

There is likewise no Roumanian village which does not count among its inhabitants some old woman (usually a midwife) versed in the precautions to be taken in order to counteract vampires, and who makes of this science a flourishing trade.

[1] During her lifetime, Gerard was regarded as something of a travel writer with a vast and privileged experience of European countries and expert linguistic abilities.

In an 1888 review of her work in Salt Lake City's Women's Exponent, Gerard was described as "a clever writer and the author of several entertaining novels [who] must be rather cosmopolitan in her tastes.

The Times observed that Emily "had not won equal popularity with that of her sister,"[13] while The Atheneum decided she was in her own right, "a capable novelist, with an excellent gift for telling a story.