A Feast of Blood English Obsession with Vampires at Strawberry Hill House

A Feast of Blood... The English Obsession with Vampires: Essie Fox & Lynn Shepherd

Essie Fox and Lynn Shepherd both write novels with a distinctly gothic flavour. For this year’s Richmond Literature Festival they will discuss the English obsession with vampires, drawing on their own fictional work and research undertaken, referring to classic literature as well as Victorian Penny Dreadfuls and even the ongoing practices of some extreme religious cults!

Please join them at Strawberry Hill House, surely the most gothic of venues, for what promises to be a truly delicious ‘Feast of Blood’.

Essie Fox was born in Herefordshire and now divides her time between Bow in East London and Windsor. She writes Victorian gothic novels published by Orion Books. She was featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club, and her debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Books Awards. Essie's latest novel, The Goddess and the Thief, explores the Victorian interest in spiritualism and the ‘undead' – along with many references to Penny Dreadful magazines and Indian vampiric cults - both real and imaginary.

After a career in the City and PR, Lynn Shepherd is now a freelance copywriter and award-winning novelist. She has written four ‘literary mysteries’, inspired by Austen, Dickens, the lives of the Shelleys, and now, Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, Dracula.