The Vampire Lords

Who are the literary ancestors of Dracula? How did the classic vampire-the tall, dark, elegant aristocrat with an endless life and an unquenchable thirst for blood-become a mass-media star? James Grant Goldin presents a curated anthology of the original texts, some freshly translated, that trace the evolution of the vampire lord in the 18th and 19th centuries. Newspaper accounts of "real" vampires in the Austro-Hungarian Empire bring word of a new kind of monster to England, France, and Germany in the 1700s. Poets experiment with the vampire, often emphasizing sexual undercurrents ignored or glossed over in official reports. In the early 1800s, George Gordon, Lord Byron, provides the template for all male vampires to come: a brooding aristocrat, irresistibly attractive, but cursed to bring, doom to those around him.