Vampires in our Midst (Illustrated): Stories by Dumas, Gogol, Le Fanu, Maupassant, Poe, and Polidori

<p>Long before the theme of the vampire became popularized by Bram Stoker, Stephen King, and Anne Rice, serious literary writers had written vampire stories, culled from different traditions, but particularly from the oral and mythical folklore. In this brief anthology of texts, we present a selection of stories by literary writers from the 19th Century: Alexandre Dumas (1862-1870), Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852), J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), and John William Polidori (1795-1821). All the elements that make a vampire a vampire are present in the selected stories: paleness, the crimson redness, the languidness, sensuality, appearance and reappearances, repulsiveness, and attraction-but above all: immortality. Such is the power of the vampire theme that in the 21st century, it is common to accept that a variety of subcultures populate and interact with the mainstream American culture.Whether in dreams, hallucinations, trances, or reality, the vampire lurks perennially-especially in the reading of any of the stories in this book.</p>