The Vampires of London (1852) is a nested series of contes cruels aggregated into a quintessentially Romantic roman frenetique, and one of the most excessive and convoluted works of that kind. Some of the scenes featuring the necrophilic vampire Lord Lodore or the one in which a young man tries to pimp his sick sister to a resurrectionist are masterpieces of the grotesque. Angelo de Sorr (1822-1881), the son of a family of vine-growers in Bordeaux, made his debut as a novelist in 1848 and eventually went on to build a substantial career, working as a writer for various periodicals and eventually publishing more than a dozen novels, as well as becoming a successful publisher himself.