Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories
Edited by Michael Sims
A Review
I recently picked up this anthology again after
a hiatus of three years and finished reading it over a weekend. To be honest I
can’t really explain why I had lost interest midway through it the first-time
round, because this is a highly readable anthology of vampire tales.
The book’s subtitle – A Connoisseur’s Collection
of Victorian Vampire Stories – gives a good indication of what lies buried
between its covers. I’m not too sure, however, whether it is helpful to describe
the works within as “Victorian”, which suggests that the stories are exclusively
by English authors of (more or less) the 19th Century. Although the Victorian era is the main source
for the material in this anthology, editor Michael Sims casts his net much wider. He starts, for instance with two accounts of
purportedly real-life vampiric manifestations, by 18th Century
French authors Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens and Antoine Augustin
Calmet. There follow Lord Byron’s “The
End of My Journey” and Polidori’s “The Vampire”, generally considered the
prototypes of English vampire fiction. Again,
they precede the Victorian era. On the
other hand, M.R. James’s classic story “Count Magnus” and Alice and Claude
Askew’s “Aylmer Vance and the Vampire” are probably too late to be considered “Victorian”.
Alongside British authors, Sims includes works
by Continental (Johann Ludwig Tieck, Gautier, Aleksei Tolstoy) and American (Mary
E. Wilkins Freeman) authors. For greater
variety, the anthology also features “vampires” of a figurative nature – indeed,
whilst all tales feature the supernatural, some of the ‘monsters’ within are
not always of the bloodsucking type.
As for this being a “connoisseur’s collection”,
I would say that this is a fair description. Editor Michael Sims cannily mixes the familiar
with unfamiliar, with works by established authors of horror fiction (Bram Stoker,
M.R. James) sitting alongside lesser-known pieces – such as an extract from Emily
Gerard’s retellings of Transylvanian lore, which would exert a marked influence
on Stoker’s Dracula. This should make this volume attractive both
to newcomers to the genre and to more seasoned vampire buffs. A foreword to the
collection and a brief biographical introduction to each story completes a
captivating anthology.
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| Illustration by Francesca Buchko - "Dracula's Guest" https://www.flickr.com/photos/francescabuchko |
Here’s a complete list of the featured tales:
Dead persons in Hungary / by Antoine Augustin Calmet --
The end of my journey / by George Gordon, Lord Byron --
The vampyre / by John Polidori --
Wake not the dead / attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck --
The deathly lover / by Théophile Gautier --
The family of the Vourdalak / by Aleksei Tolstoy --
Varney the vampyre / by James Malcolm Rymer --
What was it? / by Fitz-James O'Brien --
The mysterious stranger / by Anonymous --
A mystery of the Campagna / by Anne Crawford --
Death and burial- vampires and were-wolves / by Emily Gerard --
Let loose / by Mary Cholmondeley --
A true story of a vampire / by Eric, Count Stenbock --
Good Lady Ducayne / by Mary Elizabeth Braddon --
And the creature came in / by Augustus Hare --
The tomb of Sarah / by F.G. Loring --
The vampire maid / by Hume Nisbet --
Luella Miller / by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman --
Count Magnus / by M.R. James --
Aylmer Vance and the vampire / by Alice and Claude Askew --
Dracula's guest / by Bram Stoker
Hardcover, 469 pages
Published October 4th 2010 by Bloomsbury (first published June 22nd 2010)
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