Way back in the 1840s, the penny dreadful (rightfully named–each chapter cost a penny and most had all the literary merit of an insurance company’s internal memo) Varney The Vampyre introduced a brand new idea in vampire fiction. Given the youth of the genre, that doesn’t sound quite so impressive. On the other hand, it…
Tag: House of Dracula
Vampires – An Avatar of Sin
When vampires first drifted, shadow-like, into popular literature in the early 1800s, this denizen of ancient folklore became an incarnation of the Nightmare Stranger–the alien ‘other’ who presented a threat to civilization itself. It was death reaching out to infect the living. The foreigner who defiled virtuous women. A pagan invader thriving where the light…