Reflections of American Gothic Novelist Anne Rice

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

-Anne Rice

Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien; October 4, 1941) was an American gothic novelist.

As a young girl, Howard was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana where many of her future novels were set. Her father Howard a world war II veteran worked for the postal service. He also carved sculptures and wrote fiction on the side.

Growing up in a Catholic household, Anne received early education at St. Alphonsus Catholic school. On her first day of class, Howard added Anne to her name when called upon. Anne’s new name stuck. Anne’s mother Katherine Kay passed away from alcohol poisoning when Anne was merely 15 years old. Shortly thereafter, Anne attended St. Joseph’s Academy. She described St. Joseph’s as

something out of Jane Eyre … a dilapidated, awful, medieval type of place. I really hated it and wanted to leave. I felt betrayed by my father.

Her father Howard later remarried Dorothy Van Beaver and when Anne was sixteen, Howard moved his family to North Texas. He purchased the family’s first home in Richardson.

Living in Texas, Anne transitioned from Catholic School to Richardson High School.

While studying at Richardson High, Anne enrolled in a journalism class where she met her future husband Stan Rice.

After graduating from high school in 1959, Anne excelled at Texas Woman’s University in Denton where she studied for a year. Eventually, Anne dropped out of college due to financial instability.

After she left college, Anne relocated to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Working as an insurance processor, she registered for a night course at the University of San Francisco. Anne accepted Stan’s proposal from Texas by telegram, and the couple married in 1961. Three years later, she graduated with a B.A. in political science. Rice furthered her education when she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1974.

Rice’s literary works were influenced by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, John Milton, the Bronte sisters, and Virginia Woolf among others.

Interview With the Vampire was Rice’s first novel. In the 1980s, she started writing sequels for the novel, and subsequently, Interview with the Vampire and The Queen of the Damned were adapted into films.

Over the next forty years, she wrote more than 30 books and sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. Thirteen of her stories were part of the original “Vampire Chronicles” derived from Rice’s 1976 debut.

In addition to her gothic style fiction, Anne Rice rediscovered her Catholic faith and authored Christian novels. She also completed several erotic novels using the pen names Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure.

During Anne’s lifetime, her son Christopher Rice also became a writer. Christopher wrote tenderly about his mother stating

As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions.

and

 In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage.

Anne Rice passed away late Saturday, December 11th, 2021. Rice suffered complications from a stroke Christopher conveyed over Social Media. At the time of her death, Rice had become one of the most famous authors of American history.