Exhibition: Quite Shameless: Cultural Reflections on the Vampire

Illustration 1

I have been contacted about a new exhibition due to open 27th October 2026 at the University of Leeds’ Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery. Quite Shameless “features handwritten manuscripts and first editions of Gothic literature, but also looks to ancient folklore, science, medicine, theatre and contemporary cultural anxieties to piece together a picture of a truly immortal fiend.”

Why the title? “In a celebrated letter written after the publication of Dracula, Bram Stoker jokes, “Lord forgive me, I am now quite shameless!” This and other unique items from Leeds’ impressive holdings of Stoker correspondence and manuscripts pinpoint the zenith of the literary vampire. The author’s expansive fund of inspiration is seen in source material ranging from books on Hungary and Transylvania to Sabine Baring-Gould's 1865 Book of Were-Wolves, documenting canine teeth, pointed nails, transformations, wolves and eerie blue flames. Animal skulls from the University of Leeds School of Dentistry Museum show further sources for the vampire’s most distinctive attribute.”

Illustration 2

The exhibition also looks to other vampire works, has stage designs from Northern Ballet Theatre, “Playbills, photographs and scrapbooks from Hamilton Deane’s play”, It looks to the University’s collections of manuscripts to content regarding revenants and the “medieval fears of the dead walking again”. It also examines the medicalisation of the vampire as a creature used to “give disease a face, and {evidence} how those faces can frighten and exclude.”

Illustration 1: First edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker in its original yellow cloth binding with red lettering, 1897, London: Archibald Constable and Company.

Credit: University of Leeds Cultural Collections, BC Gen STO

Illustration 2: E.M. Lilien, illustration from Lieder des Ghetto by Morris Rosenfeld.
Berlin: S. Calvary & Co, 1903.
Credit: University of Leeds Cultural Collections, Post-1850 Additional A004