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female vampire into prose fiction, is the main claim to fame of Ernst Raupach’s ‘Wake Not the Dead,’ which was, for many years, falsely attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck. A cautionary tale about the folly of bringing the dead back to life, it was originally published in Leipzig in 1822, and received its first English translation a year later when it was included in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations. Less well-known is the quaintly titled story ‘Pepopukin in Corsica,’ in which a disagreeable suitor is sent packing by inspiring in him a dread of vampires. Originally published in 1827, in The Stanley Tales, Vol. 1, where it was credited to ‘A. Y.’, it was recently claimed that the author these initials belonged to was Arthur Young. Another story from the 1820s, this time by a French writer, is ‘The Unholy Compact Abjured’ (1825), by Charles Pigault-Lebrun, in which a soldier seeking shelter for the night encounters demonic vampires in a spooky chateau.

      Russian literature’s first major contribution to the vampire canon was Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Viy,’ which comes from his 1835 collection Mirgorod. Described by Edmund Wilson as ‘one of the most terrific things of its kind ever written,’ it is about a young philosopher’s frightening encounter with a witch-vampire and monstrous winged creatures under the control of the King of the Gnomes. The most famous vampire story from the 1830s is undoubtedly ‘La Morte Amoureuse’ (1836), by the French author Théophile Gautier. Anthologised many times under different titles (e.g. ‘Clarimonde,’ ‘The Dreamland Bride,’ and ‘The Beautiful Dead’), it tells of a young priest’s illicit relationship with a dead courtesan, whose beguiling revenant draws him into a fantastical dreamworld and nightly sucks small quantities of his blood to sustain her life-in-death existence.

      Meanwhile, in America, Edgar Allan Poe was turning out a string of morbid horror tales, several of which dealt with unusual forms of vampirism. In ‘Ligeia’ (1838), for instance, he introduced the idea of mental vampirism, linking it with the allied theme of metempsychosis. The ill-fated title character, a beautiful, highly intelligent woman, gradually wastes away as a result of her husband’s obsessive desire to know her completely; but, in a final twist, retribution for this subconscious act of vampirism seems likely when the dead woman’s spirit possesses the body of her marital successor, suggesting that the roles of vampire and victim will shortly be reversed. A variation on the same theme occurs in another of Poe’s stories, ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1845), in which an artist totally absorbed in capturing an absolute likeness of his lovely young bride is unaware of the devitalising effect it is having on her frail constitution, and fails to notice that with each sitting the woman’s life force is ebbing away. Psychic vampirism of an even more bizarre kind is the underlying theme of Poe’s masterpiece, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839). In this story the psychic vampire is the ancestral home of the Usher family, and its victims are the current occupants, Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline. By some hideous process, the ancient mansion – a sentient stone organism impregnated with the evil emanations of past generations of Ushers – is having a devitalising effect on the doomed couple, bringing the horror of madness into their lives. These three stories, along with two others utilising the vampire theme, ‘Morella’ (1835) and ‘Berenice’ (1835), were collected together in Dead Brides: Vampire Tales (1999).

      A story by one of Poe’s contemporaries, James Kirke Paulding’s ‘The Vroucolacas,’ has, in the past, attracted the curiosity of vampire aficionados due to its extreme rarity, but since it has become accessible on an internet website any hopes that it might turn out to be a forgotten gem have sadly been dashed. Originally published in the June 1846 issue of Graham’s Magazine, it is about a frustrated suitor pretending to be a vampire in order to win the hand of his sweetheart. Vampiric possession is the theme of Erckmann-Chatrian’s ‘The Burgomaster in Bottle,’ which first appeared in the French journal Le Démocrate du Rhin in 1849. Since then, this story has strangely been overlooked by compilers of vampire anthologies, a situation finally rectified by its inclusion within these pages. The most frequently anthologised vampire tale from the 1840s is ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ the bloodsucking villain of which, Azzo von Klatka, is thought to have been the model for Count Dracula. Formerly uncredited, it has recently been established that the author of this story was a little-known German writer named Karl von Wachsmann, and it first appeared in print in 1844, which is much earlier than was previously supposed. Hereditary vampirism is the theme of Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s ‘Upyr,’ which was first published in 1841 under the pseudonym ‘Krasnorogsky.’ Also worth a brief mention is the vampire episode from Alexandre Dumas’s The Thousand and One Phantoms (1848), which usually bears the title ‘The Pale Lady’ when it is published separately.

      Novels with a vampire as the central character were something of a rarity in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the only one remembered today is Varney the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood, which was originally published in weekly instalments between 1845 and 1847, coming out in book form immediately afterwards. The vampiric hero-villain of this long, rambling narrative is Sir Francis Varney, a tall, gaunt figure with cadaverous features, who is made even more frightening to look at by his glassy eyes, taloned hands, and fang-like teeth. He is also incredibly strong, can move about rapidly, and is a master of disguise. Even on those occasions where he is seemingly killed, he is subsequently revived by the Moon’s rays, allowing him to resume his nefarious activities. Finally, after an interminable series of escapades, Varney becomes tired of his life of horror, and ends it all by throwing himself into the crater of Mount Vesuvius. Currently available in a number of paperback editions, in which the novel’s authorship is attributed to either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas P. Prest, this crudely-written ‘penny dreadful’ is really only noteworthy for the influence it had on later writers, who reworked the variations on the vampire theme which it had introduced.

      In comparison with the previous decade, the 1850s were lean years for vampire fiction. The only work of any significance was Charles Wilkins Webber’s Spiritual Vampirism (1853), which had the distinction of being the first novel to have psychic vampirism as its theme. The following decade was more fruitful, producing some notable short stories featuring female vampires. Of these, none are more highly regarded than Ivan Turgenev’s ‘Phantoms’ (1864), the hero of which is repeatedly visited at night by a phantasmal female figure, who he suspects is secretly sucking his blood. The first vampire story by an Australian author, ‘The White Maniac: A Doctor’s Tale’ (1867), by Mary Fortune, centres on events that take place inside a strange house where everything in it is coloured white. A doctor’s desire to solve the mystery leads to the shocking discovery that this has been done by the owner of the property to placate his ward, a beautiful young noblewoman, who suffers from a rare type of anthropophagy, making her prone to homicidal rages whenever she sees something coloured scarlet. One of the earliest appearances of the ‘vamp’ – the name usually given to a heartless, man-eating seductress – was in ‘A Vampire,’ an episode in G. J. Whyte-Melville’s Bones and I; or, The Skeleton at Home (1868). Calling herself Madame de St Croix, this insatiable sexual vampire has remained youthful and desirable over many years and has acquired a string of lovers, all of whom have died in mysterious circumstances. On more traditional lines is William Gilbert’s ‘The Last Lords of Gardonal’ (1867), in which a nobleman is attacked by his beautiful bride on their wedding night, unaware that she has been brought back to life by a wizard’s magical powers, and can only survive in her present state by sucking her husband’s blood.

      Vampirism of a much more unusual kind occurs in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse’ (1869). In this chilling tale an ancient curse is activated when a seed found in a mummy’s wrappings is planted, and the white flower it bears slowly absorbs the vitality of a young woman after she pins it to her dress. One of the least effective stories from the 1860s is ‘The Vampire; or, Pedro Pacheco and the Bruxa’ (1863), by William H. G. Kingston. Although the main narrative is preceded by a fascinating account of the activities of vicious Portuguese vampires called Bruxas, their non-appearance in the story itself is something of a letdown.

      The only vampire-themed novels from the 1860s remembered today are Le Chevalier Ténèbre (1860) and La Vampire (1865), both of which were written by Paul Féval. In the earlier novel, two notorious male siblings, one a ghoul, the other a vampire, periodically emerge from their 400-year-old graves and go on

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