First Published: 2019
The blurb: Before Edward…
Before Lestat…
Before Dracula…
These vampires set the stage for all the rest…
Arnold Paul… The ‘real’ vampire of 18th Century Serbia…
Lord Ruthven… the first multi-media vampire star…
Varney… antiheroic prince of the penny dreadfuls…
Count Kostaki… Terror of the Carpathians…
Meet then… and their brothers in blood…
The review: I was contacted by editor James Goldin to see if I wanted to review this volume and the companion volume that focuses on female vampires (and will be subject to a separate review). This volume gathers a variety of 19th century vampire stories (along with a couple of 18th Century entries in reportage and poetry). Of course, all have been in other volumes (indeed these are specifically drawn from public domain). However, gathering them in another volume is not necessarily a bad thing.
Goldin bookends each tale with a commentary, often about the story (or author) specifically and points out some interesting factoids. The shame with this is these are not referenced, for a student of vampire media that would have been useful, and the story's source is not referenced. This is important as these stories can shift and change a little – especially those translated, so if you take the Family of the Vourdalak, I have a Skal translation that says (as per the version in this volume) that a vampire must be staked using aspen but I have a Nikanov translation that suggests ash. What is really useful is the glossary at the end of each entry, which explains words and phrases perhaps unfamiliar to the twenty-first century reader.
The stories included are all important in the genre but I might have put a little less of Varney the Vampire (21 chapters) and actually jumped through the book more (perhaps including the first chapter, the mob scene from early in the series, something from the London Hotel sequence, something from the continental stories and the turning of Clara – though the latter is included in the second volume). I then might have used some of the volume space to add in, perhaps, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ Manor or one of the more unusual Le Fanu stories (taking the point that they do not necessarily explicitly involve blood). It was a shame that Tolstoy’s Upir had only a brief excerpt, but also understandable as the editor had been unable to find a public domain translation.
The criticism on content is a personal taste thing, however, and references aside (and to be fair, most compendiums do not reference source/facts), this was worthwhile. It was fun re-reading some of these classics and I always love it when I discover something new and I had not heard of the comedic verse the Thirsty Vampires (1765) by William Hayes. 7 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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