The Tale of the Living Vampyre: New Directions in Vampire Studies

The nineteenth-century vampire has been inadequately studied until now, being usually investigated mainly as a precursor to twentieth- and twenty-first fictions. The cultural roots of the fictional monster which became iconic in the last 125 years should be analyzed with complete disregard for its more recent developments. Only in this way, as this book suggests, can we finally understand how, why, and where the myth of the vampire came into being.