Vampires

A vampire is a supernatural creature, featuring prominently in horror fiction and folk tales, that lives after death through drinking the blood of the living.

Le Vampire,
lithograph by R. de Moraine
Les Tribunaux secrets (1864)

Lilith (1892), by John Collier.

The Vampire, by Philip Burne-Jones, 1897

The idea of atavism was pervasive in the late nineteenth century, and police forces across Europe developed files of “mug shots” of criminals to be able to identify the “criminal type.” A version of this atavistic type is Count Dracula, as portrayed in Bram Stroker's Dracula (1897). Dracula himself is a version of degenerate, the Transylvanian aristocrat who has revolved into a parasitic being, feeding on the blood and life of others. John H. Cartwright, Brian Baker in: Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction, ABC-CLIO, 1 January 2005

Quotes

• The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman.
  • Theda Bara, a.k.a. "The Vamp", attributed in Leta W. Clark, Women, Women, Women: Quips, Quotes, and Commentary (1977), p. 16.

• So again Coth parted with his son in anger, and Jurgen returned again toward Barathum; and, whether or not it was a coincidence, Jurgen met precisely the vampire of whom he had inveigled his father into thinking. She was the most seductively beautiful creature that it would be possible for Jurgen's father or any other man to imagine: and her clothes were orange-coloured, for a reason sufficiently well known in Hell, and were embroidered everywhere with green fig-leaves.
  • James Branch Cabell, in Jurgen (1919), Ch. 37 : Invention of the Lovely Vampire.

• You must understand that it is little rest a vampire gets on earth, with so many fine young fellows like yourself going about everywhere eager to be destroyed.
  • James Branch Cabell, in Jurgen (1919), Ch. 37 : Invention of the Lovely Vampire.

• Van Helsing: The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.
  • Dracula (1931 English-language film) written by Garrett Fort

• She [Susan] is very lovely, Mr. Mears — very toothsome if I may be permitted a small bon mot.
  • Barlow's note left to Ben & co, in Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot, p. 345.

• The world is coming down around our ears and you're sticking at a few vampires.
  • Ben Mears, in Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot, Part 2, Chapter 5.

• When AIDS was at its most brutal, frightening, my-God-what-are-we-going-to-do era, that was when vampire stories and stories about blood and trust swept the literary world.
  • Susie Bright "Bright Ideas", interview by Tamara Wieder, Boston Phoenix, February 11, 2005.

External links

• Vampire fiction