Emily Gerard & Agnes Murgoci: TRANSYLVANIAN SUPERSTITIONS

Emily Gerard & Agnes Murgoci
TRANSYLVANIAN
SUPERSTITIONS
(Scripta Minora, vol. ii, 2013)

Contents:
1. Emily Gerard, Transylvanian Superstitions
2. Agnes Murgoci, The Vampire in Roumania

"Transylvanian Superstitions" written by Emily Gerard and first published in 1885  is widely held to have provided key inspiration to Bram Stoker while creating the novel Dracula.

On the other hand, "The Vampire in Roumania" by Agnes Murgoci is one of the best accounts of the belief in vampires in Romania.

“Transylvania might well be termed the land of superstition, for nowhere else does this curious crooked plant of delusion flourish as persistently and in such bewildering variety. It would almost seem as though the whole species of demons, pixies, witches, and hobgoblins, driven from the rest of Europe by the wand of science, had taken refuge within this mountain rampart, well aware that here they would find secure lurking-places, whence they might defy their persecutors yet awhile.”

--Emily Gerard, 1885

Emily Gerard (biography)

(Jane) Emily Gerard (7 May 1849 – 11 January 1905) was a nineteenth-century author best known for the influence her collections of Transylvanian folklore had on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Emily Gerard was born in Scotland, the daughter of Archibald Gerard and Euphemia Erskine Robison (daughter of Sir John Robison).
She is sometimes referred to as Emily Gerard, Mrs de Laszowska, Emily Laszowska, Emily Gerard, or Emily de Laszowska Gerard, after her husband, Chevalier Mieczislas de Laszowski, an Polish cavalry officer serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Her familiarity with Transylvanian folklore came about as a result of his stationing in the town of Hermannstadt (now known by its Romanian name of Sibiu) which is now located in the Romanian province of Transylvania, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918.
She reviewed German literature for the Times, having been educated in Tyrol. She spent much of her life in Austria, where she met and befriended Mark Twain, to whom The Extermination of Love (1901) is dedicated.
Her sister Dorothea (Gerard) Longard de Longgarde (1855–1915), who was arguably the more successful and certainly the more prolific novelist, also married an Austro-Hungarian officer and spent much of her life in Austria. Their novels were often set in Eastern Europe. The Gerard family also included at least two brothers, the Jesuit provincial Father John Gerard (1840–1912) and General Sir Montagu Gilbert Gerard (1843–1905), who made minor contributions to the siblings' collective literary output that eventually totaled nearly 60 books and novels. Both brothers were considered sufficiently noteworthy to be listed alongside Emily Gerard in Black's Who Was Who, 1897-1916 (1953).