First Published: 2019
The Blurb: The literary evolution of the female vampire begins with the legendary LILITH...but is she a cursed monster, or a symbol of the rebellious, independent woman? While the male vampire has gone from monster to anti-hero to dream boyfriend, the path of his sister in blood has been more complex and mysterious. James Grant Goldin presents a curated anthology of the original texts, some freshly translated, that trace the evolution of the vampire lady through the end of the 19th century.
In this anthology, there are, to be sure, monsters--VESPERTILIA of "A Mystery of the Campagna," ONEIZA of "Thalaba the Destroyer" and BRUNHILDE of "Wake Not The Dead"--but there are also vampire women in love, like CLARIMONDE, the airborne ALICE of Turgenev's "Phantoms", or the lesbian CARMILLA. There are vampires seeking justice or vengeance, like THE LADY BRIGHT. And there are characters like CLARA CROFTON or ALINSKA, who are both predators and victims.
VAMPIRES: FIRST BLOOD VOLUME II - THE VAMPIRE LADIES collects the original adventures of the daughters of darkness who returned from the dead to pit their supernatural powers against the entrenched forces of patriarchy. This anthology comes complete with introductory notes and detailed glossaries to make these surprisingly contemporary stories come alive for a new generation.
The review: When I reviewed the First Volume of this series of 19th Century vampire prose and poetry I mentioned, “I always love it when I discover something new” and there are three pieces of poetry within the volume I had not heard of. I was also struck, as I read it, that I have not featured the short story "A Mystery of the Campagna" on the blog (this will be rectified).
The content of this volume contains some of the obvious classic literature such as Carmilla and Dracula’s Guest but I found the content more varied than the first volume (a quirk, perhaps, of the subject) and the inclusion of pieces such as Phantoms and an excerpt from La Vampire ou la Vierge de Hongrie were welcome (though I might have picked a different passage of the latter but it is all a matter of opinion).
Like the first volume there are glossaries and the prose/poems are bookended with commentary. I will say I disagree with the view that a Mystery of the Campagna is “the only major vampire story in English written between Carmilla and Dracula”. Whilst some of the stories written in that period might be argued to have been not quite major, I would say that – at the time – Margery of Quether by Sabine Baring-Gould was (not only a really fascinating vampire story, but) ‘major’ enough to have been cited by the Daily Mail as a story that Dracula was similar to, when the paper reviewed the novel. A minor point, however.
This is a fine collection of 19th Century vampire prose and poetry, concentrating on the female vampire, and the variety in the tales makes me give this volume 8 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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