Anne Rice
Anne Rice was an influential American author known for her gothic fiction, particularly her works centered around vampires and the supernatural. Born Howard Allen O'Brien in 1941, she adopted the name Anne while in school and demonstrated a passion for writing from an early age, influenced by her family's storytelling traditions. Rice gained widespread acclaim with her debut novel, *Interview with the Vampire*, published in 1976, which launched the popular *Vampire Chronicles* series. Her narratives often explore themes of alienation, sin, and complex psychological issues, infused with elements of the occult and rich mythology.
Throughout her career, Rice authored numerous novels across various genres, including historical fiction and erotic literature, often using pseudonyms. Despite mixed critical reception, her works have garnered a dedicated readership, and several have been adapted into films and television series. Following personal tragedies, including the loss of her daughter, Rice's writing became a means of coping with grief. She experienced a return to Catholicism and wrote religious-themed novels in the 2000s, though she later distanced herself from organized religion due to its stances on social issues. Rice passed away in December 2021, leaving behind a legacy that continues to resonate in contemporary literature and popular culture.
Anne Rice
American novelist
- Born: October 4, 1941
- Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
- Died: December 11, 2021
- Place of death: Rancho Mirage, California
Biography
Anne Rice, the second of Howard and Katherine Allen O’Brien’s four daughters, was christened Howard Allen O’Brien but began to use the name Anne when she started school. She, like her sisters, showed an early interest in writing, her postal worker father’s avocation. One of her sisters, Alice O’Brien Borchardt, has published detective novels. Another sister, Tamara O’Brien Tinker, became a poet.
Anne Rice’s interest in occult topics was initially aroused by her mother, who was an inveterate storyteller and wove fantastic and supernatural occurrences into her stories. In one of her tales, she described a woman brushing her hair when it burst into flame. After her mother’s death from complications associated with alcoholism, the family moved to Richardson, Texas, near Dallas. Her mother’s death led Anne, then fourteen years old, to abandon her Roman Catholic faith. She worked on the high school newspaper and became a voracious reader of books, particularly of those proscribed by the church.
While still in high school she fell in love with Stan Rice, who was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and after marrying when Anne was twenty, they both entered San Francisco State University, from which she received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1964 and a master’s degree in creative writing in 1971. During those years she also studied at the University of California at Berkeley. Stan Rice, meanwhile, who had begun publishing his poetry, was appointed to teach creative writing at San Francisco State University. A turning point in the couple’s life occurred in 1972 when their daughter, Michelle, died after a two-year struggle with leukemia. Anne Rice finally realized that the best escape from her sorrow was writing, which she thereupon began to pursue with the full encouragement of her husband.
In the first months after Michelle’s death, Rice took up a short story about Louis, a New Orleans vampire, which she had begun in the late 1960s. She now began to humanize this grotesque figure and to transfer to him some of her own pain. The result was her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, the first in what became the Vampire Chronicles.
This book, like most of her subsequent books, deals forcefully with alienation and with the compulsion to sin. One character, five-year-old Claudia, who resembles Rice’s dead daughter, Michelle, is given the gift of eternal life when she is turned into a vampire. For two years Rice tried unsuccessfully to interest a publisher in her manuscript. Then Alfred A. Knopf’s Victor Wilson accepted it, acknowledging that the novel was quite unlike anything he had ever seen. His judgment was vindicated when Interview with the Vampire immediately gained a cult following.
Rice’s novels have delighted the reading public more than the critics, many of whom have expressed disapproval of the focus on sex, sadomasochism, homosexuality, and the occult. Although a novel like The Mummy: Or, Ramses the Damned is clearly a potboiler, critics had to agree that The Witching Hour, which appeared the following year, is rich in mythology and well written, as are Lasher and Memnoch the Devil, which deal with diabolical spirits. In reading Rice, the sensationalism of her occult elements may blind readers and critics alike to the metaphoric level in which she explores her psychological and philosophical themes.
Some critics have acknowledged that Rice is a gifted, resourceful, and innovative writer. Her Beauty series, which is among the most erotic writing in late twentieth century literature, deals with underlying human sexuality much as Vladimir Nabokov had done in Lolita (1955).
Rice has written her historical (The Feast of All Saints, Cry to Heaven), vampire, and witch novels as Anne Rice; her convention novels (Exit to Eden, Belinda) as Anne Rampling, and her erotic novels as A. N. Roquelaure. All, however, are infused with a dark side and delve into psychological issues.
In 1994, both Exit to Eden (directed by Garry Marshall, starring Dana Delaney and Dan Ackroyd) and Interview with the Vampire (directed by Neil Jordan, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise) were adapted into successful feature films. In December 2002, Stan Rice, her husband of forty-one years, died as the result of a brain tumor. In February 2003, Anne Rice announced that she would finish her hugely successful Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches series with the publication of Blood Canticle later that year. She promised, however, to continue writing for her legion of fans worldwide.
Following a near-death experience in 2004, Rice returned to Catholicism and began writing a fictionalized version of the life of Jesus Christ, beginning with Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005), which was followed by Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana in 2008. The books were well received by critics for secular news outlets such as the New York Times, Time, and Publishers Weekly, as well as those writing for Christian publications. Rice originally planned a third book, Christ the Lord: Kingdom of Heaven. However, in 2010 she once again left the church, citing its positions on women's reproductive rights and same-sex relationships, among other things, and the book was indefinitely postponed. The first book in the series was adapted to film under the title of The Young Messiah in 2016.
During her brief return to organized Christianity, Rice also began a new series entitled Songs of the Seraphim, fantasy novels based on Christian lore. The novels, Angel Time (2009) and Of Love and Evil (2010), star a repentant ex-assassin, Toby O'Dare, who is summoned by the angels to carry out various missions involving time travel. She also wrote a memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008), during this time.
In 2012 Rice published a werewolf novel, The Wolf Gift, which many considered her return to supernatural fiction, though Rice disputes this, as her Christian novels also feature mystical events. The book was a New York Times best seller, though critical reception was lukewarm, and was followed in 2013 by a sequel, The Wolves of Midwinter. The second book was also commercially successful and critically unsuccessful, though some reviews praised the series' world-building.
In early 2014 Rice announced that she would be publishing an eleventh installment in her Vampire Chronicles series. The book, Prince Lestat, was released later that year; it was followed by Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis in 2016. She also returned to the Beauty series with 2015's Beauty's Kingdom and published a sequel to The Mummy: Or, Ramses the Damned in 2017. The third Ramses the Damned novel, Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, was published posthumously in 2022. The same year, a television adaptation the Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire premiered, with Rice and her son, Christopher Rice, receiving executive producer credits.
Two months after her 80th birthday, Rice died from complications of a stroke at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 11, 2021.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Interview with the Vampire, 1976
The Feast of All Saints, 1979
Cry to Heaven, 1982
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, 1983 (erotic novel; as A. N. Roquelaure)
Beauty’s Punishment, 1984 (erotic novel; as Roquelaure)
Beauty’s Release: The Continued Erotic Adventures of Sleeping Beauty, 1985 (erotic novel; as Roquelaure)
Exit to Eden, 1985 (as Anne Rampling)
The Vampire Lestat, 1985
Belinda, 1986 (as Rampling); The Queen of the Damned, 1988
The Mummy: Or, Ramses the Damned, 1989
The Witching Hour, 1990
The Tale of the Body Thief, 1992
Lasher, 1993
Taltos, 1994
Memnoch the Devil, 1995
The Servant of the Bones, 1996
Violin, 1997
Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, 1998
The Vampire Armand, 1998
Vittorio the Vampire: New Tales of the Vampires, 1999
Merrick, 2000
Blood and Gold: Or, The Story of Marius, 2001
Blackwood Farm, 2002
Blood Canticle, 2003
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, 2005
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, 2008
Angel Time, 2009
Of Love and Evil, 2010
The Wolf Gift, 2012
The Wolves of Midwinter, 2013
Prince Lestat, 2014
Beauty's Kingdom, 2015 (as Roquelaure)
Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, 2016
Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra, 2017
Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat, 2018
Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, 2022
Nonfiction:
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, 2008
Screenplay:
Interview with the Vampire, 1994
Bibliography
Badley, Linda. Writing Horror and the Body: The Fiction of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice. Greenwood, 1996. Print. Discusses the ways that horror fiction deals with cultural anxieties surrounding gender, sexuality, and body image. Rice is one of the authors whose works are examined.
Dickinson, Joy. Haunted City: An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical, Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice. Citadel, 1995. A guide to the real-world locations that appear in the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series.
Hoppenstand, Gary, and Ray B. Browne, eds. The Gothic World of Anne Rice. Bowling Green State UP, 1996. An anthology of scholarly essays on Rice's works.
Keller, James R. Anne Rice and Sexual Politics: The Early Novels. McFarland, 2000. A scholarly analysis of sexuality in the Beauty series, the early Vampire Chronicles books, and Exit to Eden.
Kellogg, Carolyn. "Anne Rice Talks about Reviving Vampire Creations in 'Prince Lestat'." Los Angeles Times, 23 Oct. 2014, www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-anne-rice-20141026-story.html. Accessed 22 Mar. 2016. An interview in which the author discusses her inspirations and her feelings about modern literary trends, among other topics.
Ramsland, Katherine M. Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice. Dutton, 1991. A biography covering Rice's childhood and early writing career.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Roquelaure Reader: A Companion to Anne Rice’s Erotica. Plume, 1996. A guide to the Beauty series, including trivia and details about Rice's writing process.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Ballantine, 1993. A guide to the Vampire Chronicles written with Rice's cooperation, including discussions of the books' literary inspirations as well as reference materials such as maps and a timeline.
Ramsland, Katherine M. The Witches’ Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Ballantine, 1994. A guide to Rice's Mayfair Witches books in a similar vein to Ramsland's book on the Vampire Chronicles.
Ramsland, Katherine M., ed. The Anne Rice Reader. Ballantine, 1997. A collection of both scholarly and journalistic articles on Rice's works.
Rice, Anne. Conversations with Anne Rice. Interviews by Michael Riley. Ballantine, 1996. A collection of interviews with Rice about her life and works.
Rice, Anne. "Anne Rice on Sparkly Vampires, 'Twilight,' 'True Blood,' and Werewolves." Interview by Marlow Stern. Daily Beast, 23 Nov. 2011, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/23/anne-rice-on-sparkly-vampires-twilight-true-blood-and-werewolves. Accessed 22 Mar. 2016. An interview with Rice about her work and its relation to trends in paranormal fiction in the early twenty-first century.
Rice, Anne. "Alice Cooper Interviews Anne Rice on Religion, Vampires, Tom Cruise & Pot." Interview by Alice Cooper. Billboard, 11 Mar. 2016, www.billboard.com/articles/news/7074806/alice-cooper-interviews-anne-rice. Accessed 22 Mar. 2016. An interview with Rice about her writing and her relationship to Catholicism.
Roberts, Bette B. Anne Rice. Twayne, 1994. A critical appraisal of Rice's works.
Smith, Jennifer. Anne Rice: A Critical Companion. Greenwood, 1996. An exploration of the themes of Rice's work along with some biographical information; contains an extensive bibliography.