Vampire Literature Genre: Timeline And History

Blood-thirsty killers, seductive romantics, brooding misfits: there's a vampire for every personality type. Vampire literature has been popular for centuries, but the genre has evolved over that time. This lesson will review some of the most significant examples of vampire literature and explain how they have contributed to the changing interpretations of vampires over time.

The Vampire as a Literary Character: 

Typically, vampires are dead people who emerge from their graves or coffins at night to suck the blood of living humans. However, there are many variations of this basic idea. Some authors alter characteristics of vampires, such as by permitting them to come out during the day, or to feed on the blood of animals instead of humans. Other authors explore vampire psychology. Instead of portraying them as monstrous, evil, and hell-bent on one thing (blood!), they imagine that vampires can be complex characters, with emotions, desires, and troubles resembling our own.


Early Vampires: 

Tales of gruesome vampire-like figures are found in folklore throughout the world. However, the first widespread written accounts of vampires are early eighteenth-century newspaper articles. These reported that the Serbians Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole rose from their graves to attack victims. According to the reports, their corpses were exhumed and examined after these alleged attacks, and found to have not decomposed. Both were then stabbed with wooden stakes. You can see classic vampire imagery (the ''undead'' appearance, the wooden stakes) in these reports, which inspired literature like the German poem The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. The first English text to mention vampires by name is probably Robert Southey's long poem Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). The descriptions of vampires in these early works are largely based on folkloric accounts, and are inconsistent. For example, it's not always clear if their vampires are supernatural creatures, or just deranged humans.

Classic Vampires

''The Vampyre''

In the nineteenth century, vampire traits became standardized, as classics of gothic literature were written. The first major English vampire story is John William Polidori's ''The Vampyre'' (1819).
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

Varney the Vampire: 

Another popular nineteenth century story is James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest's Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (1845-1847).

Dracula:  
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), one of the most important and well-known vampire novels, also explores the idea of a more human-like vampire.

Modern Vampires

Following on the popularity of Dracula, numerous vampire movies emerged in the twentieth century, including the silent classic Nosferatu (1922), and the 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Vampires are also the subject of television series in more recent times, from Dark Shadows (1960s and 1970s), to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1990s and 2000s) and The Vampire Diaries (2009-present).