I'd always believed Bram Stoker's Dracula was a thinly disguised story about sexuality in a repressed time. From what I understand, his wife was kind of cold. I think he liked the idea of there being a kind of creature that could control women, and make them all wanton and stuff.

I don't know who LeFanu is. I need to go look him up. My own vampire fantasies started after seeing Frank Langella in "Dracula '79" based on the play that he also starred in. He was really dead sexy in that. You totally wanted him to win in the end.