foremost prototype of the female vampire-as-libido-run-wild theme. Some scholars claimed the text was initially penned in 1856, over 40 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula. Féval returned to the theme of vampirism with La Ville Vampire (1867) the ultimate literary ancestor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which the protagonist is Gothic novel writer Ann Radcliffe herself. In it, to save her friends from the dreaded vampire lord Otto Goetzi, Radcliffe and her fearless vampire hunting companions, Merry Bones the Irishman, Grey Jack the faithful old servant, the revenge-driven Doctor Magnus Szegeli, and Polly Bird, one of the vampire's earlier victims, mount an expedition to find the legendary vampire city of Selene. In 1873 and 1875, Féval tried to join the Académie française but was rejected, because of the popular nature of his works, but also because of his political convictions. In 1875, a few months after finishing La Bande Cadet, the seventh volume in the Habits Noirs series, Féval lost nearly all his fortune–the staggering sum of 800,000 francs–several million dollars by today's reckoning–in a financial scandal linked to the Ottoman Empire. As a result, he became what today would be called a born-again Christian, and stopped writing crime novels, which he then considered sinful. In fact, he reclaimed the rights to his earlier books and tried to rewrite them to better conform to his new principles. He also began writing religious-themed novels such as La Première Aventure de Corentin Quimper (1876) and Pierre Blot (1877). In 1882, Paul Féval was again ruined, the victim of an embezzler. He became paralyzed and unable to write. In April 1884, he suffered another blow when he lost his wife. He was taken to the hospice of the Brothers of Saint-Jean de Dieu where he died on 8 March 1887. His son, Paul Féval (1860–1933) also became a prolific writer. References Sources Author and Book info.com External links Paul Féval père - Bibliographie complète at Roman-Feuilleton & HARD-BOILED site (Comprehensive Bibliographies by Vladimir Matuschenko) 1816 births 1887 deaths Writers from Rennes 19th-century French dramatists and playwrights French fantasy writers French crime fiction writers French historical novelists French horror writers University of Rennes alumni 19th-century French novelists French male novelists 19th-century French male writers