It's in His Kiss!

One of the first avowedly homosexual stories ever published is a vampire story: ‘Manor’, written and published by Carl Heinrich Ulrichs in Leipzig in 1885. ¹ Ulrichs was among the first people to write about and proclaim a homosexual identity, ‘coming out’, as we would say now, to his family in 1862 and thereafter publishing a series of mostly theoretical books on the nature and rights of homosexuals. ² ‘Manor’ is set in the Faroe Islands and tells of the love between a youth, Har, and Manor, a seaman; when the latter is killed at sea in a storm, he returns as a spirit and sucks blood at Har's breast. The islanders realise what is happening and drive a stake through Manor's corpse, but Har is so alone without Manor that he wills himself to die; his last wish is that he be laid beside Manor in the grave and that the stake be removed from Manor's corpse – ‘And they did what he asked’.