Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Those gender-ambiguous names

I've always known writer F. Marion Crawford as the author of "For the Blood is the Life," a much-anthologized vampire tale, available online via The Literary Gothic.

As it turns out, he lived in India, knew Sanskrit, and influenced Isabella Stewart Gardner's interest in Asian religions. He nearly accompanied her and her husband on the year-long expedition documented in the Journeys East book and exhibit, and the editors of the book suggest that he didn't because of a developing romantic entanglement between him and Isabella.

And here, for all these years, I always thought that he was a woman! Oops.

P.S. In further lazy-afternoon research, I discovered that Crawford also wrote the original story "The Screaming Skull," the title and loose concept of which were used in the 1958 black and white movie (which is in the Drive-In Discs collection, along with winners like The Giant Gila Monster). Small world!

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