M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires

M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires (Robinson, July 2010)

Blurb:
Vampire culture is everywhere: in the bookshops, on TV, in nightclubs, and in the cinemas. With the success of the Twilight saga and True Blood, the lore of the undead is a global phenomenon. But where does the legend of the Vampire come from, and why does it have such a perennial appeal? Historian and vampire aficionado M. J. Trow goes in search of the origins of this blood craze a long way from the shopping malls, to the story of the fifteenth century Hungarian warrior prince, Vlad of Wallachia, who was famed for his brutality in war as well as his passion for excruciating torture. Vlad would later become the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu.

Trow’s fascinating search uncovers the forgotten story of Vlad and charts his legacy throughout history up to the present day. He shows that the legend and lore of vampirism has evolved over centuries and still has a powerful hold on our imaginations.

Press Release Robinson
From Vlad the Impaler to Edward Cullen, M.J. Trow goes in search of the allure of the vampire.

A Brief History of Vampires

By M.J. Trow
Published by Robinson
July 8th 2010 Paperback, £8.99

A must-have book for all vampire fans, A Brief History of Vampires charts the phenomenal craze of ‘popular vampires’ such as Nosferatu and Count Dracula to screen vampires such as those played by Bela Lugosi and Robert Pattinson. With the current global vampire craze taking the book, film and TV charts by storms with the Twilight saga and True Blood, this book begs the question: why do we love to be frightened?

Within a society which has become increasingly desensitised to horror, M.J. Trow charts the vampire’s global phenomenon and seeks its terrifying origins. A long way from the billboard we learn the story of Vlad ‘The Impaler’ of Wallachia. a ruler infamous for his brutality in war as well as his passion for ‘impaling’ his victims, and who later became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula.

In order to uncover the fascinating, forgotten story of ‘The Impaler’, Trow looks into the history, legend and lore of his legacy. Compellingly and historically, he shows how the legend of the vampire has evolved over centuries and explains how it still has such an intense hold on modern day imagination.

About the Author
M. Trow studied history at university, after which he has spent years teaching. He is also an established crime writer and biographer, with a reputation as a scholar who peels away myths to reveal the true history behind them. Originally from Rhondda, South Wales, he now lives on the Isle of White.

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Adele Olivia Gladwell – Blood and Roses

Adele Olivia Gladwell (ed.) – Blood And Roses: The Vampire In 19th Century Literature (Creation Press, 1992)

Introduction : The Erogenous Disease

John Polidori – The Vampyre
Charles Nodier – Smarra (excerpt)
Theophile Gautier – The Beautiful Dead
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
J.M. Rymer – The Feast of Blood (excerpt)
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre (excerpts)
Charles Baudelaire – The Vampire’s Metamorphosis
Edward Bulwer Lytton – The House and the Brain
Ivan Turgenev – Phantoms
Isadore Ducasse – Maldoror
Sheridan Le fanu – Carmilla
Guy de Maupassant – The Horla
Huysmans – La-Bas (excerpt)
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (excerpt)
Arthur Machen – The Inmost Light
Count Stenbock – The True Story of a Vampire
Bram Stoker – Dracula (excerpts)

Thanks to James Doig for providing the cover scan and contents.

Peter Haining – The Dracula Scrapbook (Bounty, 1992)

Peter Haining – The Dracula Scrapbook (Bounty, 1992)

Impostor!

Don’t buy this one thinking it’s a reprint of the sumptuous The Dracula Scrapbook paperback published by NEL in 1976, because it ain’t. It’s merely The Dracula Centenary Book (Souvenir, 1987) under false pretences.

Peter Haining – The Dracula Centenary Book

Peter Haining – The Dracula Centenary Book (Souvenir Press, 1987)

Front jacket photograph courtesy UNIVERSAL PICTURES. Back jacket drawing by BRUCE WIGHTMAN jacket design by' BARFIELD ASSOCIATES

Acknowledgements

Dracula Lives!
An Amazing Story of Resurrection
The Birth of the Legend
The Bloodthirsty Parents of Dracula
Dracula by Day—and Other Misconceptions
The Count Who Won’t Lie Down
Playing the Master of the Undead
Tales of the Vampire Hunter
‘The Bloofer Ladies’
The Wurdalak Who Might Have Been Dracula

Appendices

Emily de Laszowska Gerard –  Transylvanian Superstitions
A Checklist of Vampirism
Bela Lugosi –  I Like Playing Dracula
The Dracula Films
Dr David H. Dolphin –  Vampires — The Mystery Diagnosed
Dracula Societies

Blurb

One hundred years ago in the autumn of 1887, the most famous vampire of them all, Count Dracula, stalked from his castle in Transylvania to the streets of London. and started a legend that has endured and grown to epic proportions.

This book is published to celebrate not only that momentous event, but a number of other Dracula-related anniversaries also. It is seventy-five years since the death of Dracula’s brilliant creator, Bram Stoker, and ninety years since the publication of the original novel: 1987 also marks the centenary of the birth of Boris Karloff, the film star whose name is so closely associated with the vampire legend on the screen.

Dracula has become a twentieth century myth, extending his influence into all branches of the media. Stoker’s novel has never been out of print and has only been outsold by the Bible and the collected works of Shakespeare, but the story has also been adapted for the cinema, dramatised for the stage, radio and television. and spawned a whole series of books and films on the Dracula theme — not to mention a worldwide fascination with the subject of vampirism.

Profusely illustrated with photographs and prints, many of which have never before appeared in book form, The Dracula Centenary Book explores this extraordinary success story, drawing on much previously unpublished material. Following the recent discovery of the original manuscript of the novel, packed away and forgotten on a Pennsylvanian farm, and from studying the author’s working papers held in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, it is now possible to discover exactly how Bram Stoker developed and researched his book. The story of the growth of the screen cult is equally fascinating: the author includes interviews with the stars who have appeared in the major film versions over the past fifty years and a detailed listing of the films themselves.

There is also a chronology of famous real-life cases of vampirism from around the world.

Peter Haining is a recognised authority on supernatural literature and horror films. His enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge combine to make a book that is unputdownable.

PETER HAINING has been an avid student of horror, fantasy and the supernatural since boyhood, and has published many books on the subject, which have not only been widely successful but have made a valuable contribution to the literature on the genre. With his wife and three children, he lives in East Anglia

See also Vault’s Dracula Centenary Book thread

Paul Bibeau – Sundays With Vlad

Paul Bibeau – Sundays With Vlad (Constable, 2008)

Cover design and illustration by JoeRoberts.co.uk

From Pennsylvania to Transylvania. One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead

MEET COUNT DRACULA AND ALL HIS CRAZY CHILDREN

As if visiting the dentally challenged lord of the night’s castle weren’t enough, vampire enthusiast Paul Bibeau digs through Bram Stoker’s original manuscript, meets with the president of the Dracula Fan Club and even marches in the Transylvania Day Parade as a giant garlic bulb – all part of his quest to reach the stone-cold heart of vampiredom.

From the moment his older sister jumped him, baring her glow-in-the-dark vampire fangs, Paul Bibeau was hooked. You could say this traumatic childhood experience scarred him for life – he began to develop an ever-deepening obsession with the Undead. Years later, his fixation led him to revise his honeymoon plans, persuading his unsuspecting wife to take a trip to Wallachia, Romania and the legendary lair of Dracula – the towering castle of Vlad the Impaler.

Clutching his guidebook like a bible, Bibeau sets off on an alarming but comic journey into the dark history of his hero.

Wasn’t sure where to put this on the forum as it’s tagged ‘Travel’, but it features a Dracula obsessive, reflects on the Ceausescu and ‘the Prez’  tyrannies and hauls in several vampire scene *ahem* “personalities” for interrogation (if they’re anything like the one’s of my acquaintance, the challenge is to get them to talk about something, ANYTHING other than themselves for ten seconds), so I guess it warrants a plug on Vault and besides, I like the retro cover a lot!

Three chapters in , and it all becomes clear. Mr. Bibeau’s travelogue is the latest in a fairly recent tradition that includes Rosemary Guiley’s Vampires Among Us, Norine Dresser’s American Vampires, MS Carol Page’s incendiary Blood Lust, Tony Thorpe’s Children Of The Night, Arlene ‘Bite Me!’ Russo’s *ahem* “disappointing” Vampire Nation and Kathleen Ramsland’s Piercing The Darkness – books which purport to make sense of the vampire subculture and often provide details of the author’s expeditions to Transylvania, New York, Whitby and (for the more adventurous) a fetish club.

Autumn 1999 and the honeymooning Paul and Anne Bibeau are being questioned by machine gun-toting guards at Bucharest airport. How did it come to this? Paul traces it back to his childhood and the day his big sister crawled from out of his dresser wearing glow-in-the-dark fangs. The experience sent him off on one and he’s never really come back.

He ain’t exactly Ripton Torn but I think many Vault people will recognise something of themselves in Mr. Bibeau. He was the weird kid at school, obsessed with all things monsters and the Leonard Nimoy hosted In Search Of “documentaries”: He’d ransack the local library for books on the supernatural (“factual”, preferably as he found horror fiction boring). A few years down the line he took the vampire in folklore for his independent study course and hosted a slide-show on his very topic in the same building. After college he took a job on a West Point (Virginia) newspaper, became an amateur ghost hunter and investigated unexplained phenomena, etc., etc. …. and then he proposed to a drop dead smart lawyer who looks nice in her business suits.

In the circumstances, a Honeymoon in Vlad country was inevitable

Peter Haining – Classic Horror Omnibus

Peter Haining – Classic Horror Omnibus Volume 1 (New English Library, 1979)

Peter Haining – Introduction

Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Clemence Housman – The Werewolf
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Gaston Leroux – The Phantom Of The Opera

Peter Haining – The Vampire Hunters Casebook

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Vampire Hunters’ Casebook (Warners, 1996)

Introduction-Peter Haining
Preface: Bram Stoker (extract from “Dracula”)

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla [extract]
Arabella Kennealy – The Beautiful Vampire
Alice and Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire
Uel Key -The Broken Fang
Seabury Quinn -The Man Who Cast No Shadow
Sydney Horler – The Vampire [extract]
Manly Wade Wellman – The Last Grave of Lili Warren
Peter Haining – The Beefsteak Room
Jeff Rice – The Night Stalker [extract]
Karl Edward Wagner – Beyond Any Measure
Robert Bloch – The Undead
Anne Rice – The Master of Rampling Gate
David J. Schow – A Week in the Unlife
Peter Tremayne – My Name Upon the Wind

Blurb

The Vampire Hunter is one of the most most courageous figures to stalk horror fiction’s bloody pages. Venturing into the world of the Undead armed only with a crucifix, wooden stake, garlic and a bottle of holy water, he dares the impossible – to end the existence of those already dead. And while Count Dracula is assured his place as the father of all vampires, so his nemesis in Bram Stoker’s seminal creation, Professor Abraham Van Helsing has his own immortality guaranteed within the pantheon of honor.

From its first incarnation in nineteenth-century melodrama to the works of more recent masters of the supernatural, such as Anne Rice and Robert Bloch, Peter Haining’s new anthology of short stories traces the fictional history of the Vampire’s greatest foe. Including the vampire hunter’s earliest appearance in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ – with one of the most gruesome scenes in all of vampire literature – Van Helsing’s shadow casts an unmistakable presence over a diverse range of authors.

Prefaced by an extract from Dracula guiding the uninitiated into the vampire hunter’s arts, the good doctor from Amsterdam is resurrected in three stories: Robert Bloch’s ‘The Undead’, Peter Haining’s own ‘The Beefsteak Room’ and Peter Tremayne’s finale, ‘My Name Upon The Wind’ (written especially for the anthology), a truly chilling tale in which Van Helsing  is transplanted to present-day Ireland.

Staking a persuasive claim for these unsung heroes of the night, THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS’ CASEBOOK is a collection to fire the imagination and curdle the blood; but one word of warning – only in daylight should it be opened