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Post by dem bones on Sept 13, 2011 16:06:32 GMT
Michael Sims (ed.) - Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (Bloomsbury, 2010) Michael Sims - Introduction: The Cost Of Living
Part One: The Roots
Jean-Baptise de Moyer, Marquis d'Argens - They Opened The Graves Antoine Augustin Calmet - Dead Persons In Hungary George Gordon, Lord Byron - The End Of My Journey John Polidori - The Vampyre Johann Ludwig Tieck (attributed [almost certainly wrongly]) - Wake Not The Dead Theophile Gautier - The Deathly Lover
Part Two: The Tree
Aleksei Tolstoy - The Family Of The Vourdalak James Malcolm Rymer - Varney The Vampyre (extract) Fitz-James O'Brien - What Was It? Anonymous - The Mysterious Stranger Anne Crawford - A Mystery of the Campagna Emily Gerard - Death And Burial - Vampires And Werewolves Mary Cholmondeley - Let Loose Eric Count Stenbock - A True Story of a Vampire M. E. Braddon - Good Lady Ducayne Augustus Hare - And The Creature Came In F. G. Loring - The Tomb of Sarah Hume Nisbet - The Vampire Maid
Part Three: The Fruit
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman - Luella Miller M. R. James - Count Magnus Alice and Claude Askew - Aylmer Vance and the Vampire Bram Stoker - Dracula’s Guest
Acknowledgements Bibliography & Further ReadingFrom the Blurb Before Twilight and True Blood, vampires haunted the nineteenth century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel, Dracula.
Acclaimed author and anthologist Michael Sims brings together the finest vampire stories of the Victorian era in a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety. Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Aleksei Tolstoy's tale of a vampire family to Fitz-James O'Brien's invisible monster to Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sinister widow Good Lady Ducayne. Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker's own Dracula's Guest - a chapter omitted from his landmark novel.Highly derivative of Richard Dalby's Dracula's Brood to be sure, but you don't see too many copies of that floating around these days and as a " wean them off Twilight & True Blood and onto the juicy stuff" primer - like there's anything wrong with liking Twilight & True Blood? I seem to remember the taste police sneering at Buffy before they "reassessed" their opinion - this 470 pager has its merits. If you're wondering about unfamiliar titles, the extract from Varney is the opening chapter, Augustus Hare's is it's twin brother and usually reprinted as The Vampire Of Croglin Grange, while Theophile Gautier is represented by a new translation of the story better known to many of us as Clarimonde. To Bloomsbury's great credit, they (along with Robinsons, Wordsworth - am sure there are others, and sincerely apologise if i'm struggling to think of them!) - are one of few UK mainstream publishers prepared to give supernatural & horror short stories the time of day. £18.99 may be a strain on the younger Twilight fans pocket money so good news that a paperback is either already available or imminent.
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Post by jamesdoig on Sept 14, 2011 6:29:34 GMT
Dem, is that Mick Sims of Maynard/Sims fame?
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Post by dem bones on Sept 14, 2011 6:52:09 GMT
Different person, James. This Michael Sims lives in Pennsylvania and has written non-fiction science and nature books. He also edits The Penguin Book Of Gaslight Crime and The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime. Here's his homepage www.michaelsimsbooks.com/Home.htm
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Post by ripper on Jan 16, 2013 10:27:56 GMT
I am really not sure if I want to buy a copy of this one or not. Most of the stories in the "Roots" section are unfamiliar to me, but I already have copies of most of those in the other two sections in other anthologies. If I could pick up a cheap copy then I would probably get it for the "Roots" section, but having seen the contents list of Richard Dalby's Vintage Vampire Stories, that anthology looks like a better prospect for my particular circumstances as it contains far more tales of which I am unaware.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 16, 2013 13:03:46 GMT
Bit cheesed off with this as I recently obtained an Arrow paperback of Stoker's Dracula's Guest (which handily rounds up the great man's other short stories). I'm fairly sure I can get the paperback locally cheap (ie under three quid) and I'm sorely tempted to have a copy of The Vampyre in a 'proper' book.
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Post by ripper on Jan 16, 2013 15:57:03 GMT
Much to my surprise, the book is available from a local library, so I will probably loan it and see how it goes before making a possible purchase.
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Post by fritzmaitland on Oct 13, 2021 7:48:29 GMT
Yes, indeedy, did turn up a different copy of this for the princely sum of £2.75 at a (now long gone) local bargain bookshop. And so to Mother Russia and her environs in the company of Aleksei (distant cousin of Leo) Tolstoy and The Family Of The Vourdalak for the 10th October story. The story is told by preposterous old bore the Marquis d'Urfe who has a very inflated opinion of his younger self and is trying to relive his youth with a gaggle of impressionable youth (mostly female - the old rake). Incensed by his latest doxy playing hard to get, the Marquis stumps off to Moldova after being presented with a cross by said concerned doxy. He shacks up with a cheery local family, just as Gorcha the patriarch is heading for the hills with a posse to lay low a Turkish bandit chieftain who is terrorising the countryside. The old boy gives his family the curious instruction to hold a funeral service for him if he's not back in ten days, but if he's back before that time limit, don't let him in the house. What does he know? The crafty old devil turns up exactly ten days after he left, so the family are uncertain what to do. The dog kicks off at him, and he orders it shot. Has he changed, or was it just the fact he had the severed head of the bandit with him. Vampiric mayhem is about to ensue, with the Marquis unwisely falling for the eldest daughter. There's even a chase at the end. Rather good stuff, even if the Marquis does drone on a bit.
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