The Bloody Countess
About this book
Descended from one of the most ancient aristocratic families of Europe, Erzsebet Bathory bore the psychotic aberrations of centuries of intermarriage. From adolescence she indulged in sadistic lesbian fantasies, where only the spilling of a woman’s blood could satisfy her urges. By middle age, she had regressed to a mirror-fixated state of pathological necro-sadism involving witchcraft, torture, blood-drinking, cannibalism and wholesale slaughter. These years, at the latter end of the 16th century, witnessed a reign of cruelty unsurpassed in the annals of mass murder, with the Countess’ depredations on the virgin girls of the Carpathians leading to some 650 deaths. Her many castles were equipped with chambers where she would hideously torture and mutilate her victims; hundreds of girls were killed and processed for the ultimate, youth-giving ritual: the bath of blood. The Bloody Countess is Valentine Penrose’s true, disturbing case history of a female psychopath, a chillingly lyrical account beautifully translated by Alexander Trocchi (author of Cain’s Book), which has an unequalled power to evoke the decadent melancholy of doomed, delinquent aristocracy in a dark age of superstition.
Reader Profile
3.5/5 · 25 readers · 192 pages · ≈ 3 h 33 m · Moderate
How long does it take to read The Bloody Countess?
About ≈ 3 h 33 m — 192 pages, assuming roughly 250 words per page at 225 words per minute.
How many pages is The Bloody Countess?
192 pages in its most-read edition.
What genre is The Bloody Countess?
It sits on the True Crime, Biography & Memoir, History shelves.
Is The Bloody Countess in the public domain?
No — it is still under copyright.
Who wrote The Bloody Countess?
Valentine Penrose.