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“Drink from me and live forever…”                  
This line from the novel Interview With the Vampire has always left a line of goosebumps along the readers’ skin. Anne Rice's immensely popular horror fiction attracts both the academic reader and the general reader with equal ease. During the past several years, for example, no other writer of popular horror fiction has drawn as much academic attention at the national Popular Culture Association conference meetings as has Anne Rice (Bratzal). Typically, at least one entire panel of scholarly essays is offered annually on Rice's gothic fiction, and these presentations are always well attended. In fact, a number of the articles appearing in this collection originated as papers delivered at one of these PCA conference panels. Such scholarly interest indicates that her best-selling gothic novels draw the highly educated, the academically oriented, or those who recognize in her fiction evidence of sophisticated characterization and intricate plotting. These readers also identify in her gothic fiction numerous allusions to other great works of literature, such as Bram Stoker's masterpiece, Dracula. As are the finest contemporary authors of popular horror fiction—such as Clive Barker, Robert R. McCammon, and Stephen King—Rice is faithful to the gothic tradition and honors that tradition in her own work. The erudite reader, well versed in bookish knowledge, appreciates and, as evidenced by the academic participation at the national Popular Culture Association conference, obviously responds enthusiastically to Rice's skilled incorporation of traditional literary themes in her best-selling gothic novels.
But Rice’s  fiction is not mere slavish imitation of the efforts of past masters of the gothic form. Her most popular novels, such as Interview with the Vampire and The Witching Hour, though situated within the gothic narrative tradition, go far beyond the conventions of the formula and explore...