First Blood: Birth of the Vampire 1732-1897

"After it had been reported that in the village of Medvegia the so-called vampires had killed some people by sucking their blood, I was, by high degree of a local Honorable Supreme Command, sent there to investigate the matter thoroughly along with officers detailed for that purpose..." *** So begins the 1732 military report by an Austrian official with respect to an incident he had been sent to investigate. *** It is also the first piece in this collection that traces the development of the myth of the Vampire through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating in the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula. *** With complete annotated texts and commentary describing the development of the myth, this collection contains the following pivotal pieces which led to the birth of the modern Vampire: *** Visum et Repertum (Military Report, 1732), The Vampire (Heinrich August Ossenfelder, 1748); William and Helen (Sir Walter Scott's adaptation of Gottfried August Bürger's Lenore, 1794); The Bride of Corinth (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797); Christabel (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797-1800); The Vampyre: A Tale (John William Polidori, 1819); Varney the Vampire: Or, The Feast of Blood (Select Chapters Only, John William Rymer, 1847); Carmilla (J. Sheridan LeFanu); Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897).