Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World / Edition 2

by Dudley Wright

Overview

Vampires and Vampirism is part of the canon of works on the folklore of vampires. Inside these pages are many accounts of the presence of nocturnal creatures with an unnatural hunger. Readers will discover that tales of vampires are whispered not only in the sleepy villages of easternand central Europe but also in the Middle East, the Asian sub-continent, and the isles of Great Britain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590210024
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	05/01/2001
Series:	Classics of Preternatural History , #1
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.36(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Dudley Wright was a prolific British author and folklorist who wrote several works on ancient religions, Freemasonry, and legends. His work in the area of vampirology remains important to this day.

Read an Excerpt

'The belief in vampires, ghouls, and lamies, all of which are more or less similar, appears to have been known from time immemorial among the Arabs and Persians. The Thousand and One Nights and many other Oriental stories turn on this subject, and the terrible superstition is still believed in by the Arabs. Plato and Democritus say (and traces of this belief are not unknown among the Semites), that souls lived for a certain time close to their dead bodies, which they sometimes preserved from corruption...'
—from chapter 9, "Vampirism Among the Orientals: Funerary Feasts and Orgies"

Table of Contents

Chp 1   Introductory
Chp 2   Excommunication and its Power
Chp 3   The Vampire in Babylonia, Assyria, and Greece
Chp 4   Vampirism in Great and Greater Britian
Chp 5   Vampirism in Germany and Surrounding Countries
Chp 6   Vampirism in Hungary, Bavaria, and Silesia
Chp 7   Vampirism in Servia and Bulgaria
Chp 8   Vampire Beliefs in Russia
Chp 9   Vampirism Among the Orientals
Chp 10   Miscellanea
Chp 11   Living Vampires
Chp 12   The Vampire in Literature
Chp 13   Fact of Fiction?
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Anyone with even a glimmer of belief in vampires will thoroughly enjoy reading Vampires and Vampirism from Lethe Press' Classics of Preternatural History."
—moderator of Horror Books & Movies at About.Com

Tara Mahovetz

"The book addresses vampirism in a non-skeptical manner, and the style of writing would be very familiar for any fan of H.P. Lovecraft as this is the exact type of text the protaganists of his stories would find to explain the mysteries around them. The book's chapters take on vampires based on regions of the old world - from the Middle East to England. This allows all the variations of vampires to be discussed, and that is one of the key elements of this book: the amazing variation in vampire legends around the world. Even from one region to another."

Stygian Labyrinth