SOURCE: Smith, Jennifer. “Supernatural Genres: Horror, Gothic, and Fantasy.” In Anne Rice: A Critical Companion, pp. 9-18. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Smith traces various literary influences on the writing of Anne Rice, including the Romantics, the Victorians, and writers of Gothic fiction.

To analyze Anne Rice's work by genre or kind of fiction, it's necessary to go all the way back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was then that writers developed a fascination with the modern ideas of the supernatural. These writers, the Romantics, rejected the idea that everything could be explained by science and instead insisted that there were many things unexplained and unexplainable, including the individual human spirit. Romantic literature emphasizes strong ties to nature as both wild and true, an acceptance of the supernatural as a real force in life, an appreciation for passion over logic, and a...