Another short story collection for the vampire lit course. This spans from the early 1800’s to the 1980’s. If you’re a vampire history buff, you’d like some of these. So many people think Dracula was the first vampire story and that’s really far from the truth. In this you’ll see the much disputed The Vampyre by John Polidori who was the doctor to Lord Byron and was said to have stolen this from him. It also contains the fragment of Byron’s own vampire novel. A piece of Varney the Vampire ‘The Feast of Blood’ is in this. Varney was a penny dreadful series spanning hundreds of pages of vampire fun. < i>Carmila makes another appearance.

There are some from female authors I didn’t know like Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1896) with Good Lady Ducayne and Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman with Luella Miller in 1903. The more modern authors (60’s-80’s) include Chelsea Quinn Yarbo, Robert Bloch and Tanith Lee.

What is nice is that each story is accompanied by notes to put things in context. I liked that (especially given the class it was for) and naturally not all the stories were that great and the older ones will have language that will be a struggle for those not used to the vastly different writing styles of the 1800’s. Again I’m not sure if this is still in print or not but it’s worth looking up in the used book stores/libraries.

The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, a 1987 anthology edited by Alan Ryan, is, like most story collections, a mixed bag. My tastes favor the Gothic and literal when it comes to vampire tales, and so I particularly enjoyed the front section of this chronologically arranged collection, most especially J. Sheridan Le Fanu's classic "Carmilla"; "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker; "The Room in the Tower" by E.F. Benson; "Shambleau" by C.L. Moore; and " The Drifting Snow" by August Derleth. But in the back section of the book, when the tales became more modern and psychological, I did not have such a good time. Two long stories in particular, "Cabin 33" by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and "Unicorn Tapestry" by Suzy McKee Charnas, I did not care for at all, which made for a particularly rough 110-page slog near the end of the book. This is all a matter of taste, of course. So with some 'good' stories and some 'bad', I'll call it a wash and give the anthology a nice middle-of-the-road rating.

Stories and novel excerpts from the early 19th century to the mid 20th. Gothic and gory to horror to satire, this is a wide variety.

Please see full review here.