Dracula is the vampire lord who brought fame to the undead monster of legend, the one we’re all most familiar with. But the concept of vampires didn’t spring fully formed from Bram Stoker’s mind. Who were the literary vampires that came before Dracula and paved the path for him? Editor James Grant Goldin seeks to answer that question in his two-volume collection Vampires: First Blood, published back in July. The volumes are divided by gender, with the first volume focusing specifically on “The Vampire Lords.” This is the one I’ll be reviewing today.
Vampires: First Blood, Volume I: The Vampire Lords traces the evolution of the male vampire in literature through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the introduction, James Grant Goldin lays out some common threads that will appear in the tales throughout the collection—particularly the evolution of the association of vampirism with aristocracy, which he considers key to the creature’s continued popularity. What follows are nine tales in chronological order, each with an introduction and an afterward explaining some context and the story’s significance within the wider vampire genre. The first piece in the collection is not a work of fiction, but rather a newspaper article from 1732 reporting the allegedly true account of a Serbian peasant named Arnold Paul who returned from the dead to torment his neighbors. From there, we see the vampire appear in two poems: “Der Vampir” by Heinrich August Ossenfelder and “The Vampyre” by John Stagg. Next come the two stories that emerged out of Villa Diodati, Byron’s unfinished fragment and Polidori’s elaboration on Byron’s tale. Then there are two Russian tales by Count Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy), an excerpt of the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire, and finally, The Pale Lady, a lesser-known work by the famed French novelist Alexandre Dumas.
I absolutely loved seeing all of these tales laid out next to each other so that we can see the evolution of the vampire genre as a whole. Reading these tales as a unit was a completely different experience from reaching each one individually. Goldin’s commentary does a great job of pointing out the innovations and major genre tropes established in each tale, such as when the vampire made the jump from peasant to nobleman (Byron’s fragment), who the first vampire was to leave distinctive bite marks on his victim (Polidori’s Lord Ruthven), and which vampire was the first to be depicted with noticeable fangs (Varney). Goldin also notes other milestones, like the first vampire tale to have a homoerotic subtext (John Stagg’s poem) and the first vampire story to be told from a woman’s perspective (The Pale Lady). Since my focus of study tends to be on the evolution of a particular literary genre or subgenre over time, I wish I could read all of my literature like this—with works grouped in order and their connections and contexts explained! One thing I’m not fully convinced of, though, is why Goldin chose to divide his two volumes of vampire tales by gender. I would much rather read all the vampire tales in pure chronological order, unless a compelling case can be made that the male and female vampire evolved along significantly different and largely segregated lines. But I guess I will have to read volume II to see if Goldin’s editorial choice is justified!
Apart from its overall insights about the vampire genre, I am most grateful to this book for getting me to finally read Varney the Vampire (or at least part of it). Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood was a particularly popular penny dreadful in the 1840s that I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog. It introduced many important tropes to the vampire genre, but I’d been reluctant to read it for several reasons. Mainly, because it was a serialized story where the author got paid by the word for each installment, Varney the Vampire is interminably long and is known for having issues with pacing and inconsistency. But also, I must confess, I was swayed by the prevailing stereotype that penny dreadfuls are poor quality literature, churned out hastily and aimed at the least discerning of the reading populace. I am happy to report that these stereotypes are unfounded, and that the beginning of Varney the Vampire, at least, is highly enjoyable and one of my favorite stories in the collection. Goldin chose to include the first twenty chapters of the story—cutting out a lengthy digression—plus chapter 34, which involves an important scene between the vampire and his victim. I was hooked from the very first scene, in which the young maiden Flora wakes in the middle of a dark, stormy night to see a terrifying figure at her window. From there, we get everything from repeated nightly attacks on the young woman, a portrait of an ancestor that looks strikingly like the creature, a nighttime expedition to the tomb of said ancestor, and in-depth discussion of the mechanics around vampirism and how their victims are turned. I’ll definitely be talking about Varney more in future posts, so keep an eye out!
If you’d like to see this evolution of the vampire genre laid out for yourself, you can purchase Vampires: First Blood, Volume I: The Vampire Lords online using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you read it, be sure to let me know what you think in the comments!