XLeptodactylous

Robert Louis Stevenston was a 19th Century Scottish writer, most famous for Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Olalla is an early short story about a young English soldier recovering in the Spanish mountains from his war wounds.

"And if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are common, but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome with a better grace."

It is a very well-written early take on Vampires, pre-dating Dracula by 12 years. It is of the early Gothic type, where the horrors are narrated only via the narrator himself, and not gone in to much detail. It is majestic in its description, as any first-person story should be, but which all modern-day ones lack completely.

"[Love] should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit, and enter upon the joys of the compete human intimacy."

A tale of old-kind love, which at its heart is not so different to ours now, but one which speaks so much more deeper than many I have encountered.