The latest instalment of my year-long blog series on the history of vampire literature is now available to read at WWAC. My overview has reached the 1850s and 60s, and I’ve taken the opportunity to look at how writers from this period were using the vampire motif in a more deconstructive manner.
My case studies are Paul Féval’s novel Le Chevalier Ténèbre and a novel by Charles Wilkins Webber called (deep breath) Yieger’s Cabinet: Spiritual Vampirism, the History of Etherial Softdown, and Her Friends of the “New Light”. Judging by a cursory Google search, I may well be the first person on the Internet to write in detail about that second volume, so hopefully even the most scholarly horror buffs will find something new in my post…
Doris V. Sutherland 