Anne Rice

Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life in the city before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Catholic family but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire (1976), while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, she published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Several years later she distanced from organized Christianity, while remaining devoted to Jesus. She later considered herself a secular humanist.^[2]


Rice's books have sold over 100 million copies, making her one of the best-selling authors of modern times.^[3][4] While reaction to her early works was initially mixed, she gained a better reception with critics in the 1980s. Her writing style and the literary content of her works have been analyzed by literary commentators. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years, from 1961 until his death from brain cancer in 2002 at age 60.^[5][6] She and Stan had two children, Michele, who died of leukemia at age five, and Christopher, who is also an author.


Rice also wrote books such as The Feast of All Saints (adapted for television in 2001) and Servant of the Bones, which formed the basis of a 2011 comic book miniseries. Several books from The Vampire Chronicles have been adapted as comics and manga by various publishers. She authored erotic fiction under the pen names Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure, including Exit to Eden, which was later adapted into a 1994 film.

Reception and analysis[edit]

Following its debut in 1976, Interview with the Vampire received mixed reviews from critics at this time, causing Rice to retreat temporarily from the supernatural genre.^[23] When The Vampire Lestat debuted in 1985, reaction—both from critics and from readers—was more positive, and the first hardcover edition of the book sold 75,000 copies.^[23] Upon its publication in 1988, The Queen of the Damned was given an initial hardcover printing of 405,000 copies.^[23] The novel was a main selection of the Literary Guild of America for 1988,^[57] and reached the No. 1 spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, staying on the list for more than four months.^[23]


Rice's novels are well regarded by many members of the LGBT+ community, some of whom have perceived her vampire characters as allegorical symbols of isolation and social alienation.^[23] Similarly, a reviewer writing for The Boston Globe, observed that the vampires of her novels represent "the walking alienated, those of us who, by choice or not, dwell on the fringe".^[58] On the subject, Rice commented: "From the beginning, I've had gay fans, and gay readers who felt that my works involved a sustained gay allegory ... I didn't set out to do that, but that was what they perceived. So even when Christopher was a little baby, I had gay readers and gay friends and knew gay people, and lived in the Castro district of San Francisco, which was a gay neighborhood."^[59]


Rice's writings have also been identified as having had a major impact on later developments within the genre of vampire fiction.^[58] "Rice turns vampire conventions inside out", wrote Susan Ferraro of The New York Times. "Because Rice identifies with the vampire instead of the victim (reversing the usual focus), the horror for the reader springs from the realization of the monster within the self. Moreover, Rice's vampires are loquacious philosophers who spend much of eternity debating the nature of good and evil."^[23]


Rice's writing style has been heavily analyzed.^[57] Ferraro, in a statement typical of many reviewers, described her prose as "florid, both lurid and lyrical, and full of sensuous detail". Others have criticized her writing style as both verbose and overly philosophical.^[57] Author William Patrick Day comments that her writing is often "long, convoluted, and imprecise".^[60] The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote: "Anne Rice has what might best be described as a Gothic imagination crossed with a campy taste for the decadent and the bizarre."^[61]

Death[edit]

Rice died from complications of a stroke at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 11, 2021, at the age of 80.^[37][93] According to a statement from Rice's son Christopher Rice, the family planned to inter her at the family mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.^{[93][37][94][95]}


Rice was laid to rest in January 2022.^[96] The Rice Family Mausoleum is also the burial site of Rice's husband Stan Rice and daughter Michele. One side of the tomb is stained glass, the other three sides are engraved with Stan Rice's poems from his books "False Prophet" and "Some Lamb". The mausoleum is open to the public during visiting hours.^[97]