The Vampires of London (1852) is a nested series of contes cruels aggregated into a quintessentially Romantic roman fr n tique, and one of the most excessive and convoluted works of that kind. Some of the scenes featuring the necrophilic vampire Lord Lodore or the one in which a young man tries to pimp his sick sister to a resurrectionist are masterpieces of the grotesque. Angelo de Sorr (1822-1881), the son of a family of vine-growers in Bordeaux,...