Vampire Literature

String garlic by the window and hang a cross around your neck! The most powerful vampire of all time returns in our Stepping Stone Classic adaption of the original tale by Bran Stoker. Follow Johnathan Harker, Mina Harker, and Dr. Abraham van Helsing as they discover the true nature of evil. Their battle to destroy Count Dracula takes them from the crags of his castle to the streets of London... and back again.

For vampire Blaine Kettridge, the cold, dark nuclear winter is the beginning of a new life--he can hunt and feed whenever he pleases, because it is always night

Perhaps more than any region, the American South is haunted by the mythology of the vampire, returned from the dead to drain life from the living.

The long and distinguished tradition of the literary vampire began in Germany during the Age of Enlightenment. German literature was the first to adapt the vampire figure from central European folklore and superstition and give it literary form. Despite these German origins, scholarly attention devoted to literary vampires has consistently focused on a select set of sources: British and French literature, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the phenomenon of the vampire superstition in general. While there have been many illuminating studies of pre-literary vampires and vampires that have already been firmly established as literary figures, the story of the crucial moment of transition from folkloric figure to literary subject has not yet been told. In The Origins of the Literary Vampire Heide Crawford redirects scholarly attention to the body of German poetry and prose where vampire folklore becomes vampire literature. This book focuses on the adaptation of the vampire superstition from central European folklore by German poets in the 18th and early 19th centuries for an audience that had become increasingly interested in superstition and occult phenomena in an Age of Enlightenment. In addition to establishing that the origins of the literary vampire in 18th and 19th century German poetry and prose were informed by the stories and reports of vampires from Central Europe, Crawford argues that the German poets who adapted this figure from superstition for their creative work immediately molded it into a metaphor for contemporary cultural anxieties and fears—a connection that would inspire horror literature in general and the traits of the literary vampire in particular for the 19th century and beyond. Contemporary culture has exhibited a marked fascination with eroticized and politicized applications of the vampire. This volume traces these erotic motifs, common political motifs and others to the first vampire poems that were written by German poets. Consequently, this book answers three central questions: What were the origins of the literary vampire; how was the vampire of folklore and superstition adapted for literature; and how did German poets contribute to the development of the vampire and Gothic horror literature? By answering these and other questions, The Origins of the Literary Vampire explains how the literary vampire became the ubiquitous horror figure it is today.

Prominent examples from contemporary vampire literature expose a desire to re-evaluate and re-work the long-standing, folkloristic interpretation of the vampire as the immortal undead. This book explores the "new vampire" as a literary trope, offering a comprehensive critical analysis of vampires in contemporary popular literature and demonstrating how they engage with essential cultural preoccupations, anxieties, and desires. Drawing from cultural materialism, anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, gender studies, and postmodern thought, Piatti-Farnell re-frames the concept of the vampire in relation to a distinctly twenty-first century brand of Gothic imagination, highlighting important aesthetic, conceptual, and cultural changes that have affected the literary genre in the post-2000 era. She places the contemporary literary vampire within the wider popular culture scope, also building critical connections with issues of fandom and readership. In reworking the formulaic elements of the vampiric tradition — and experimenting with genre-bending techniques — this book shows how authors such as J.R. Ward, Stephanie Meyers, Charlaine Harris, and Anne Rice have allowed vampires to be moulded into enigmatic figures who sustain a vivid conceptual debt to contemporary consumer and popular culture. This book highlights the changes — conceptual, political and aesthetic — that vampires have undergone in the past decade, simultaneously addressing how these changes in "vampire identity" impact on the definition of the Gothic as a whole.

Vampire Literature: An Anthology is the first anthology of vampire literature designed specifically for use in the higher education classroom. As Nina Auerbach argues in her introduction to Our Vampires, Ourselves, vampires are “personifications of their age”; with coverage from the early nineteenth century to the twenty-first, Vampire Literature: An Anthology brings together a wide range of texts from many eras—and bring together as well work by American, British, Irish, and Caribbean writers. The focus is on shorter prose texts, primarily short stories and novellas (Polidori’s The Vampyre and LeFanu’s Carmilla are included in full); in a few cases, longer works are excerpted. Included as well are a range of illustrations and other visual materials. With an informative general introduction, headnotes to each selection, and explanatory footnotes throughout, Vampire Literature: An Anthology is ideally suited for use in the undergraduate classroom.

SOON TO BE A NEW FILM, STREAMING ON MAX FALL OF 2024 • #1 BESTSELLER • Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. "A master storyteller." —The Los Angeles Times When two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work. In fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town. With this, his second novel, Stephen King established himself as an indisputable master of American horror, able to transform the old conceits of the genre into something fresh and all the more frightening for taking place in a familiar, idyllic locale.

In Blood Thirst: One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf gathers thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt.

The definitive collection of 19th century,literature in which the vampire, or vampirism -,both embodied and atmospheric-appears. In a single,volume charged with sex, blood and horror, 17,seminal texts by legendary authors cover the whole,of that delirious period fom Gothic and Romanticthrough Symbolism and decadence to,proto-Surrealism and beyond.

Vampires have always fascinated and frightened, and now their reach goes beyond horror-flick fans. Teens the world over have fallen under the spell of these mysterious, blood-sucking, and oh-so-alluring beings! From Buffy to Twilight, vampire fans have gotten smarter and savvier, and this is the book for them. Learn how vampires live, how they avoid capture, and why they're so darn attractive. Also trace the history of vampire lore--in literature, movies, and on television--from the woods of Transylvania to the modern-day high school. Chock full of info and insight, each gorgeous page will draw in readers of every age, with innovative styling, never-before-seen imagery, and deliciously wicked design. Perhaps this enticing tome is best read while wearing a garlic necklace . . .