Legends of Blood : The Vampire in History and Myth

If ever there was in the world a warranted and proven history, it is that of vampires: nothing is lacking, official reports, testimonials of persons of standing, of surgeons, clergymen, of judges; the judicial evidence is all-embracing.' - Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The vampire - that potent mixture of blood-lust and romantic horror - has a long history and a wealth of legend.

Almost every culture has its vampire myths, from red-eyed monsters with pink hair in China to the Greek Lamia, the child-eater described by Keats as 'Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,/Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barred'.

All have in common the need to drink blood, preferably human, and a mysterious quality of being neither dead nor alive.

Legends of Blood looks at the myths and beliefs of ancient Greece and Egypt; pre-Christian Europe; the medieval witch craze and its links with vampirism and lycanthropy; the association between vampirism and alchemy; eastern European vampirism; Gothic literature; the modern vampire in literature and film; the popular image of the vampire and the survival of the myth.

W.B. Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu ultimately show that belief in vampirism seems to be deep-rooted and that the vampire still exerts a powerful force on the imagination today.