Books About Vampires

The greatest vampyre story of all would have to be VAMPIRE LESTAT. I believe they should have that in film instead of going to QUEEN OF THE DAMNED but there you go.

I have written several Vampyre tales and published a few, To me there is no better character archtype for human kind then that of the undead. One of the classes I teach is that of The Vampyre in Literature: here is a brief section of a paper I wrote on Vampyrism in Literature and real origins of the myth in literature as we now accept as stereotypical vampyre written by Dr. John Polidori,

Dr. John Polidori’s 'The Vampyre' because of the attraction and influence it held to inspire later writers of vampire fiction, notably Sheridan le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe and most famously Bram Stoker.

John Polidori was born on September 7th 1795 in London, the son of the former secretary to the poet/dramatist Alfieri. Polidori junior studied medicine and by the age of 20 had become personal physician and traveling companion to Lord Byron, on the suggestion of a mutual friend. Initially the two got on well but the ghost story competition and Polidori's success there must have angered and frustrated Byron and their friendship gave way under the pressure.

Polidori was dismissed in September and returned to England, where he practiced medicine once more, began studying for the Bar, and fairly soon afterwards died. The truth about his death may perhaps never be known.

After his death, the journal covering the period in Switzerland (where both Le Vampyr and Frankenstein were written) was published by one of his nephews, William Michael Rossetti. It is from this initial report that we gain our truest picture of the relationship between Byron and his physician.
The competition of the ghost stories was simply one between Byron and Shelley. What is certain is that the input to the competition of the other two, and the literary works which sprang out of that encounter, can scarcely have been expected to gain any kind of status, either with the 'real' writers of the party or with the general public. Even as the daughter of two celebrated writers and political theorists, it cannot have been imagined that Mary Shelley had much to offer compared to her husband and his illustrious friend.

Polidori's case was surely even more deplorable. He had only his literary aspirations with which to gain favour as he was in real terms playing more the role of the servant than the friend on an equal level with such poetic genii as Byron and Shelley.

What was it then that inspired Polidori to create a short story, taking their inspiration direct from Bram Stoker without being aware of his own influences – have admired and sought to emulate? The answer is Lord Byron. 'The Vampyre', to give it its proper credit, was inspired by a tale told in the evening by Byron, which bears startling theoretical and literary similarities to Polidori's piece. The influence of Byron was such that when 'The Vampyre' was originally published in 'The New Monthly Magazine' in April 1819 it was attributed to him.

The rift between the two men having widened in the interim few years however, Byron denied all authorship and a month later Polidori stepped out of the shadows and claimed it for his own admitting the influence of his great friend in its conception. "I beg leave to state that your correspondent has been mistaken in attributing that tale in its present form to Lord Byron. The fact is that though the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine." As all great writers draw influences from those around them, from Nature, from God, so Polidori had adapted a tale of his then friend and perhaps hero, the original basis of which he might not, as a doctor, have felt able to provide convincingly.

It undoubtedly took the civilized world by storm, being translated into French, German, Spanish and Swedish and adapted into a stage play all in Polidori's own lifetime. Considering that he died just two years after its publication that is quite some achievement. In contrast Anne Rice's 'Interview with the Vampire' (1976) took nearly 20 years to get onto the screen.

The notoriety of the tale was unquestionable: many great commentators of the day declared it a fine work, and it would probably be rather cynical to imagine that all of the praise came while people still laboured under the misapprehension that it was the work of Lord Byron, Goethe's famous comment about 'The Vampyre' being the best thing Byron had ever written.
What then of the text, and the characteristics both physical and psychological of the vampyre, Lord Ruthven, who so inspired later generations of vampyre writers? This is not as might have been suggested the seminal vampire text although it does lay claim to being the first such text in the English language. In continental, Europe, a great tradition of vampyre literature had been blooming, and the folkloric tales of the undead had centuries of history.

Goethe's 'Die Braut von Korinth' (1797) and Southey's 'Talaba the Destroyer' (1801) carry on the themes discussed in Bürger's work. All these texts may be seen as mediaeval or gothic works, the core difference between these and Polidori's work is not so much in the setting but in the character of the vampyre.]

The vampyre is characterized in folklore: from the peasant classes, living a rural existence, uneducated, dirty and quite frankly having no appeal whatsoever for its victims. This is clearly the Nosferatu, a violent scavenger, a brainless revenant seeking only for the blood it needs to survive. The fact that in many cases the Nosferatu returns to kill members of its own family may perhaps be put down more to a familiarity with the landscape than to any emotional or romantic attachment to its loved ones.

Subsequent treatments of the Nosferatu legend have attempted with some success to infuse a little of the 'Dracula magic' into the Nosferatu character, creating a being hideous to see but with rather more imagination and intelligence than earlier accounts allowed it.

At this time however the Nosferatu was the familiar shape for the vampyre to take. Max Shrek of the 1933 Murnau film captures the image of the Nosferatu in the film by the same name.

Shrek’s Character Count Oarlock is very tall and wiry. He has pointed ears and is completely hairless. His face is shrunk in so that the bones of his cheeks are exposed. However most prominently are the two large rat-like teeth, which protrude over his lips. His hands are withered with the long bony fingers that he rubs together nervously. This is the image of the peasant vampyre; it is not the vampyre of Bram Stoker or Polidori.

With the advent of Polidori’s story the figure of the vampyre took a dramatic leap forward, leaving behind the shabby, stupid, blundering image of the Nosferatu for a more sophisticated and refined social animal, the Toreador or Byronic vampyre. Here is a creature in strictly human form, with no huge teeth in the front of its mouth, and no bald head or pointed ears, a creature with human emotions and human drives, a creature that can pass freely in the world of men and need not fear detection in the enlightened society through which he stalks.

The aristocratic figure who mingles in high society, delighting and thrilling all with his strange mannerisms and moods, is a far cry from the lonely beast rampaging through the forest tearing out the throat of any passing creature in order to carry on his vile existence. Here instead we have a creature altogether more terrifying in its sheer plausibility: it looks human, acts almost human, talks like a human, and moves among the highest echelons of society. Surely the menace inherent in such a creature is of a more insidious and horrifying kind than that of the weird, supernatural entity of the Nosferatu.

Even the term 'Byronic vampire' shows the influence of Polidori's master, and the fact that Lord Ruthven was based on his benefactor has been taken by some critics to point to a homosexual liaison between the two men. Personally, though this is a fascinating explanation for the character and appearance of Polidori's vampyre, this is an assumption that is hardly borne out by the text itself. After all, though the central point of the text is the pursuit and persecution of Aubrey by Ruthven, there is no sexual conquest involved and all of Ruthven's victims are decidedly female.

Working chronologically backwards, the physical side of Polidori's Ruthven is
immediately recognizable in the knowledge of Stoker's Dracula, but it is just as obvious in the emotional and psychological motivations of both the characters. Ruthven and Dracula both pursue one main heroic figure – Aubrey pre-shadowing Harker in more ways than one – and both take advantage sexually and emotionally of someone close to that hero – Aubrey's sister parallels Harker's wife in the later work.

The character of Ianthe could also by this means be said to mirror Lucy Westenra. Ruthven is aristocratic, wealthy, a stranger to the society in which he finds himself, cold, aloof, physically different to the men around him, sexually tempting and alluring, often violent, and remorseless in his quest for the fulfillment of his desires. Dracula is all of these things, and Polidori's influence on Stoker is more then evident.

The importance of the vampyre's physical attractiveness is a strong one: 'In spite of the deadly hue of his face... its form and outline were beautiful.' The pallor of course is the most immediately visible sign of preternatural, and Stoker too takes up this image.

Vampyrism is not exclusively of a physical nature of course, and the psychological emphasis of Polidori's work has a powerful effect. The mental decline of Aubrey, firstly on the 'death' of Ruthven, then the death of Ianthe, and finally on seeing Ruthven once more alive – 'Lord Ruthven again before him... he could not believe it possible... the dead rise again! It was impossible that it could be real' – is mirrored in Harker's mental collapse in the face of the horrors he unearths in Castle Dracula.

The conflict between the rational if somewhat fanciful man of logic and the man bewildered by supernatural phenomena which he finds it impossible to believe in – even though he has the proof of his own eyes in which to trust – enmeshes the reader just as much as the physical violence of the vampire. This character, so completely rounded in emotional terms, is a far advancement from the ravening monster of earlier vampyre texts.
The similarities between the text of 'The Vampyre' and its source material, Byron's 'A Fragment' – published with 'Mazeppa' in 1819 – are startling, leading many people even now to overlook Polidori's work in favour of Byron's. After all, Byron is the internationally renowned poet, the celebrity, the fiery spirit of the age; Polidori by contrast is a shadowy, little-known figure, and a man of medicine with literary pretensions but no great literary output.

It would be easy to simply denounce Polidori as a plagiarist and be done with it, but is it truly just to put the authorship of the final tale down to a strange quirk of Fate? Polidori may not have the status or weight of Byron, but his literary aspirations still led him to adapt a fragmentary tale, which his great companion did not wish to develop. Perhaps Byron felt such a task beneath his capabilities; perhaps he grew bored with the concept. Whatever the reason, Polidori took it to heart and chose to work on it to the best of his abilities. That his creation inspired so many writers of a later age right down to the present day is surely the mark of some small genius.

The first major writer of later vampire fiction is undoubtedly Edgar Allan Poe, although his works tend to focus more on the psychological vampyrism of people, objects and even buildings than on the blood and fangs of what may be termed modern vampire literature. Stories such as 'Morella' (1835), 'Ligeia' (1838) and 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (1839) all demonstrate this fascination. Although Poe doe’s not have a figure like Lord Ruthven, the fundamental elements of psychological vampyrism as propounded by Polidori are clearly to be found.
The first truly modern era vampyre tale is the rambling 'Varney the Vampyre' (1847) in which the eponymous antihero takes on a vaguely Byronic form in which to terrorize his victims. A minor character is named Count Polidori: could there be a clearer hint of the writer's debt to his predecessor?
To all of these writers, Polidori, and Lord Ruthven, was clearly something of a benchmark. Never before had a text been so widely available which dealt with such a disturbing yet fascinating matter. There was an instant and enduring challenge to write something in, excuse the pun, a similar vein. I would in fact argue that the creation of Polidori's Lord Ruthven had a similar effect upon the writers of the 19th century as the creation of Bram Stoker's Dracula has had upon writers and filmmakers of the 20th century.

To rank Polidori with Stoker is perhaps no great accolade – Stoker was never exactly famed as a writer in his own lifetime either – but to compare his creation to arguably the most famous horror figure of all time is surely the greatest praise with which one can honour a writer. The honour is all the more noteworthy as it belongs to a little-known, little-recognized doctor, whose literary talents were confined to that one brief exploration of the art.
George Gordon Byron, better known as Lord Byron, was nothing if not the
prototype of the conflicted Romantic hero. His persona has influenced artists, from Beat writers to rock stars (think of dark rock icons like Jim Morrison and Trent Reznor), possibly more than his art itself.
Bram Stoker’s fable Dracula written to illustrate the free will man has and the extent that unrequited love might be achieved. Dracula had fought in the wars in the name of God. He had killed in His yet on returning home to Carpathia he found his bride to be dead by her own hand. Reportedly, his wife committed suicide by leaping from the towers of Dracula's castle into the waters of the Arges River rather than surrender to the Turks or to live her life without him.

At that point Vlad Tepes Dracul spits his venom in the face of God, rejected His love and called down his wraith. Vlad like Cain or the Roman who pierced Christ’s side were punished with immortal damnation. Dracula was always my favorite.

Bram Stoker penned his immortal classic, Dracula, he based his vampire villain on an actual historical figure. Stoker's model was Vlad III a fifteenth century viovode, or prince, of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Dracula was born in 1431 in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. At that time Dracula's father, Vlad II Dracul, was living in exile in Transylvania. Vlad Dracul was in Transylvania attempting to gather support for his planned effort to seize the Wallachian throne from the Danesti Prince, Alexandru I. The house where Dracula was born is still standing. In 1431 it was located in a prosperous neighborhood (of the fortress town Sighisoara, ed.) surrounded by the homes of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility.

Little is known about the early years of Dracula's life. It is known he had an elder brother, Mircea, and a younger brother named Radu. His early education was left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. His real education began in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne and killing his Danesti rival.

His training was typical to that common to the sons of the nobility throughout Europe. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to Wallachia is a Provence of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. Knighthood was an elderly boyar whom had fought under the banner of Enguerrand de Courcy at the battle of Nicolopolis against the Turks. Dracula learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight.

The political situation in Wallachia remained unstable after Vlad Dracul seized the throne in 1436. The power of the Turks was growing rapidly as one by one the small states of the Balkans surrendered to the Ottoman onslaught. At the same time the power of Hungary was reaching its zenith and would peak during the time of John Hunyadi, the White Knight of Hungary, and his son King Matthius Corvinus.

Any prince of Wallachia had to balance his policies precariously between these two powerful neighbors. The prince of Wallachia was officially a vassal of the King of Hungary. In addition, Vlad Dracul was a member of the Order of the Dragon and sworn to fight the infidel. At the same time the power of the Ottomans seemed unstoppable. Even in the time of Vlad's father, Mircea the Old, Wallachia had been forced to pay tribute to the Sultan. Vlad was forced to renew that tribute and from 1436-1442 attempted to walk middle course between his powerful neighbors.

In 1442 Vlad attempted to remain neutral when the Turks invaded Transylvania. The Turks were defeated and the vengeful Hungarians under John Hunyadi forced Dracul and his family to flee Wallachia. Hunyadi placed a Danesti, Basarab II, on the Wallachian throne.

In 1443 Vlad II regained the Wallachian throne with Turkish support, on the condition that he sign a new treaty with the sultan that included not
only the customary annual tribute but the promise to yearly send contingents of Wallachian boys to join the sultans Janissaries. In 1444, to further assure to the sultan of his good faith, Vlad sent his two younger sons to Adrianople as hostages. Dracula remained as a hostage in Adrianople until 1448.
In 1444 the King of Hungary, Ladislas Poshumous, broke the peace and launched the Varna campaign under the command of John Hunyadi in an effort to drive the Turks out of Europe. Hunyadi demanded that Vlad II fulfill his oath as a member of the Order of the Dragon and a vassal of Hungary and Join the crusade against the Turk. The Pope absolved Dracul of his Turkish oath, but the wily politician still attempted to steer middle coarse. Rather than join the Christian forces himself he sent his oldest son, Mircea. Perhaps he hoped the sultan would spare his younger sons if he himself did not join the crusade.

The results of the Varna Crusade are well known. The Christian army was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Varna. John Hunyadi managed to escape the battle under conditions that add little glory to the White Knight's reputation. Many, apparently including Mircea and his father, blamed Hunyadi for the debacle. From this moment forth John Hunyadi was bitterly hostile toward Vlad Dracul and his eldest son.

In 1447 Vlad Dracul was assasinated along with his son Mircea. The boyars and merchants of Tirgoviste apparently buried Mircea alive. Hunyadi placed his own candidate, a member of the Danesti clan, on the throne of Wallachia.
Wallachia first emerged as a political entity during the late thirteenth century from the weltering confusion left behind in the Balkans as the Eastern Roman
Empire slowly crumbled. The first prince of Wallachia was Basarab the Great (1310-1352), an ancestor of Dracula. Despite the splintering of the family into two rival clans, some members of the House of Basarab continued to govern Wallachia from that time until well after the Ottomans reduced the principality to the status of a client state.

Dracula was the last prince of Wallachia to retain any real measure of independence. In order to understand the life of Vlad Dracula it is first necessary to understand something about the nature of Wallachian society and politics. The throne of Wallachia was hereditary but not by the law of primogeniture; the boyars, or great nobles, had the right to elect the voivode from among the various eligible members of the royal family. As with most elective monarchies during the Middle Ages the power of the central government tended to be dissipated among the nobility as various members of the ruling family vied for the throne. Wallachian politics also tended to be very bloody. Assassination was a common means of eliminating rivals and many of the voivodes ended their lives violently and prematurely.
By the late fifteenth century the House of Basarab had split into two rival clans; the descendants of Prince Dan and those of Prince Mircea the Old (Dracula's grandfather). These two branches of the royal house were bitter rivals, both Dracula and his father, Vlad II Dracul, murdered rivals from the Danesti upon reaching the throne. The second ascendant fact of the fifteenth century Wallachian political life was the influence of powerful neighbors. .

In 1431 Vlad II was invested with the Order of the Dragon by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg. The Order of the Dragon was a knightly order dedicated to fighting the Turk. Its emblem was a dragon, wings extended, hanging on a cross. From 1431 onward Vlad II wore the emblem of the order. His coinage bore the dragon symbol. The dragon was the symbol of the devil and, consequently, the alternate meaning of 'drac' was dragon. (Note: "dragon", noun, Middle English from Old French, derivation of the Latin, "draco"; served as the emblem of the Roman Cavalry.)

Under this interpretation Vlad II Dracul becomes Vlad II, the Dragon and his son, Vlad III Dracula, becomes Vlad III, the Son of the Dragon.

In 1453 Constantinople and the last vestiges of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, which had blocked the Islam's access to Europe for nearly one thousand years, succumbed to the armed might of the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror. Long before the fall of the Imperial City the Ottomans had penetrated deep into the Balkans. Dracula's grandfather, Mircea the Old, was forced to pay tribute to the sultan early in the fifteenth century. The Hungarian Kingdom to the north and west of Wallachia reached the zenith of its power during the fifteenth century and assumed Constantinople's ancient mantle as defender of Christendom. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the princes of Wallachia attempted to maintain a precarious independence by constantly shifting allegiances between these powerful neighbors.


Dracula ruled as Prince of Wallachia on three separate occasions. He first claimed the throne with Turkish support in 1448. On this occasion he ruled for only two months (October-November) before being driven out by a Danesti claimant supported by Hungary. Dracula dwelt in exile for several years before returning to Wallachia to kill the Danesti prince, Vladislov II, and reclaim the Wallachian throne with Hungarian support. Dracula's second regal period stretched from 1456 to 1462. It was during this time that Dracula carried out his most famous military exploits against the Turks and also committed his most gruesome atrocities.

In 1462 Dracula fled to Transylvania to seek the aid of the King of Hungary when a Turkish army overwhelmed Wallachia. Instead of receiving the assistance he expected the Hungarian king imprisoned Dracula. He remained a prisoner of Matthius Corvinus of Hungary for several years.

For most of the period of Dracula's incarceration his brother, Radu the Handsome, ruled Wallachia as a puppet of the Ottoman sultan. When Radu died (ca. 1474-1475) the sultan appointed Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan, as prince. Eventually, Dracula regained the favor and support of the Hungarian king. In 1476 he once again invaded Wallachia. His small force consisted of a few loyal Wallachians; a contingent of Moldavians sent by his cousin Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia, and a contingent of Transylvanians under their prince, Stephen Bathory (a common ancestor of both Vlad II and Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess who personally murdered 650 virgins).

The allies succeeded in driving Basarab out of the country and placing Dracula on the throne (November 1476). However, after Dracula was once again in control, Stephen Bathory returned to Transylvania taking most of Dracula's army with him. The Turk's soon counter-attacked with overwhelming force. Dracula was killed fighting the Turks near Bucharest in December of 1476. His head was sent to Constantinople where the Sultan had it displayed on a stake to prove that the terrible Impaler was really dead.
Vlad was called Tepes (the Impaler) only after his death in 1476. Impalement was considered a particularly gruesome form of execution, the victim was stuck on a sharp stake usually the width of a big burly man's arm. Vlad was said to especially enjoy mass executions, where several victims were impaled at once, and their stakes hoisted upright. As they hung suspended above the
ground, the weight of their bodies would slowly drag them downwards, causing the sharpened end of the stake to pierce their internal organs causing a slow painful death. In order to better enjoy these mass spectacles, Vlad routinely ordered a banquet table set up in front of his victims, and would enjoy a leisurely supper amid the pitiful sights and sounds of the dying. It is estimated that Vlad killed some 20,000 men, women and children - the amount of people he killed varies from anywhere 20,000 to 500,000. He showed no mercy and tortured his enemies before killing them.

At the same time that Vlad became notorious for his sadism, He was a respected as a warrior and a stern ruler who tolerated no crime against his people, and during his reign erected several monasteries. He was a hero that was both worshiped and feared by his people. In 1459 on St. Bartholomew's Day, Vlad had 30,000 of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. In order to enjoy the entire experience he commanded that his table be set up and that his boyars join him for a feast amongst the forest of impaled corpses. Whilst dining, Vlad noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to try and avoid some of the smell of blood and emptied bowels of the surrounding bodies. Vlad took it upon himself to impale the man higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench.

The man was an envoy of the Transylvanian cities of Brasov and Sibiu sent to appeal to Vlad to spare those cities. Whilst hearing the man's appeals Vlad took great enjoyment walking amongst the stakes with some of the bodies still alive.
He always thought up some excuse for these executions. He killed merchants who cheated their customers. He killed women who had affairs. Supposedly he had one woman impaled because her husband's shirt was too short. He didn't mind impaling children, either. Afterwards he would display the corpses in public so everyone would learn a lesson. It's said that there were over 20,000 bodies hanging outside his capital city. Of course, his enemies might have exaggerated the stories about Dracula’s cruelty.

In 1462 Dracula attacked the Turks to drive them out of the Danube River valley. Sultan Mehmed II retaliated by invading Walachia with an army three times larger than Dracula's. Dracula was forced to retreat to his capital, Tirgoviste. He burned his own villages and poisoned wells on the way so that the Turkish army wouldn't have any food or water. When the sultan reached Tirgoviste, he saw a terrifying scene, remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled." There, outside the city, were 20,000 Turkish prisoners, all impaled. The sultan's officers were too scared to go on - Dracula had won again.

Although the sultan retreated, Dracula's little brother Radu did not. The Turks had provided him with an army in hopes that he could seize Dracula's throne. Many of Dracula's boyars abandoned him to join Radu. Radu's army pursued Dracula to his fortress at Poenari. The Turks seized the castle, but Dracula managed to escape through a secret tunnel. There were still some peasants around he hadn't impaled, and they helped him flee from Walachia. He became a Catholic to please the Catholic Hungarians. He ingratiated himself with the Hungarian royal family, and even married one of its members. But he was still the same old Dracula. He impaled rats and birds for fun. Once a thief broke into his house and a Hungarian captain followed him to arrest him. Dracula didn't kill the thief - he killed the officer, because the officer was a gentleman, and should have known not to enter a house uninvited.

if you base your ideas of vampire books on the twighlight series, then you are really mising out. There are so many better books and series on vampires than twightlight. btw, i think it was written badly, but you, of course, are entitled to your opinion as we all are.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles are pretty good for the most part. I think her first few books were genuinely good (e.g. Interview with the Vampire, the Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned) but beyond that, she's just suckling all the money she can out of the cold, hard teat of her publisher. They went downhill.

There CAN be good vampire literature, it's the same as any other genre- it all depends on the author and how it is written, not what it is about. It seems though, that vampirism is becoming an extremely trendy, cutting edge, slightly risque fad that is exciting, romantic and dangerous for all of the button down, goody two shoes teens. (I am NOT in any way saying that these are the only people who read vamp. lit.) and it is becoming exceedily easy to capitalize on that fad, which floods the market with crap books.

I work with a woman, her name is Barbara Ross, and she wrote a vampy novel called "A Mortal Indiscretion." (There are two volumes)

I recommend it.

http://barbraeross.com/

Just checking out the site helps, so, check it out!

For me, Anne Rice's vampire series is still the best. Her vampires are both hateful and adorable characters. The author has a way of making you hate and fall in love with the characters. I like her portrayal of vampires as creatures who are not bad and not good either.

I have read quite a few of the books mentioned, and do agree with some points. Personally I love some of the Anne Rice vampire chronicles with the vampire Lestat and Merrick being favourites but I do find myself drawn to the historical backgrounds sometimes more than the characters!

I would also recommend I am Legend, Poppy Brites Lost Souls and Carrion Comfort(cant remember author) as being very different treatments of the vampire story.

I do love vampire short stories and the cross over with sci-fi, erotica, lycanthropy horror and gothic stories by writers like Ray Bradbury, Steven King, and Le Fanu in anthologies makes it very interesting,

I didnt have chance to read all the posts fully but I didnt notice any mention of Ezrabet Bathory who like Vlad Tepes is a historical figure often linked to vampire mythology, there are also many old mythologies concerning 'pshycic vampirism'

A strange one also that I havent seen mentioned is The Vampyre by Tom Holland, which features Lord Byron and gives a nod to the Polidori/Byron debate x