Peter Haining - The Vampire Omnibus

Peter Haining (ed.)  – The Vampire Omnibus  (Orion 1995)

Introduction – Peter Haining
Preface: ‘The Destruction of Castle Dracula!’ – Bram Stoker (an extract from the original manuscript of “Dracula”)

Elizabeth Grey – The Skeleton Count or, The Vampire Mistress
James Malcolm Rymer – The Vampyre’s Story (extract from “Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood”)
Alexandre Dumas & Paul Bocage – The Pale Lady
Julian Hawthorne – The Grave of Ethelind Fionguala (aka “Ken’s Mystery”)
Mary Cholmondeley – Let Loose
Count Eric Stenbock – A True Story of a Vampire
Frank Norris – Grettir at Thorhall-Stead
Morley Roberts – The Blood Fetish
Gustav Meyrink – The Land of the Time-Leeches
Charles Caldwell Dobie – The Elder Brother
Henry Kuttner – I, the Vampire
James Robinson Planche – The Bride of the Isles
Eugène Sue – Les Vampires
Paul Monette – Nosferatu (an extract from “Nosferatu: The Vampire”)
Bela Lugosi – The Bat .
Peter Tremayne – Son of Dracula
Val Lewton – The Cat People
Jimmy Sangster (John Burke, surely?) – Dracula: Prince of Darkness
Simon Raven – Incense for the Damned (extract from “Doctors Wear Scarlet”)
Marilyn Ross – Dark Shadows (extract from “The Secret of Collinwood”)
Stephen King – “One for the Road”
Anne Rice – Interview with the Vampire (extract from “Interview with the Vampire”)
Clive Sinclair – Uncle Vlad
Ray Russell – Sanguinarius
Woody Allen – Count Dracula
Ray Bradbury – West of October
Richard Matheson – First Anniversary
Theodore Sturgeon – So Near the Darkness
Roger Zelazny – Dayblood
Ron Goulart – Vampirella (extract from “Vampirella #1: Bloodstalk”)
William F. Nolan – Getting Dead
Basil Copper – Reader, I Buried Him
Richard Laymon – The Bleeder
Jack Sharkey – Dracula: The Real Story

He wasn’t fooling with the “Omnibus” part of the title, was he? Thank Gawd that’s done.

As has been remarked elsewhere, he does like an extract from a novel does our Mr. Haining, and this can be irritating, galling even, if it’s disguised to make it look as if you’re getting one of the author’s “lost” works.

But, as with The Midnight People, we can forgive much on the strength of the rest of this one, especially the finds and less familiar exhumations.