Best Vampire Short Stories Anthology Now in Hardback

Just in time for the holidays, The Best Vampire Short Stories 1800-1850 is now available in for the first time in hardcover. You can buy it on Amazon for $18.98 with free Prime shipping: https://amzn.to/32sfNl2

An anthology award finalist in the International Book Awards, this collection unleashes the greatest early vampire tales in the English language. Unearthed from long forgotten journals and magazines, Andrew Barger has found the very best vampire short stories from the first half of the 19th century. They are collected for the first time in this groundbreaking book on the origins of vampire lore.

The cradle of all vampire short stories in the English language is the first half of the 19th century. Andrew Barger combed forgotten journals and mysterious texts to collect the very best vintage vampire stories from this crucial period in vampire literature. In doing so, Andrew unearthed the second and third vampire stories originally published in the English language, neither printed since their first publication nearly 200 years ago. Also included is the first vampire story originally written in English by John Polidori after a dare with Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. The book contains the first vampire story by an American who was a graduate of Columbia Law School. The book further includes the first vampire stories by an Englishman and German, including the only vampire stories by such renowned authors as Alexander Dumas, Théophile Gautier and Joseph le Fanu.

As readers have come to expect from Andrew, he has added his scholarly touch to this collection by including story backgrounds, annotations, author photos and a foreword titled "With Teeth." The ground-breaking stories are:

1819 The Vampyre - John Polidori (1795-1821)
1823 Wake Not the Dead - Ernst Raupach (1784-1852)
1848 The Vampire of the Carpathian Mountains - Alexander Dumas (1802-1870)
1839 Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter - Joseph le Fanu (1814-1873)
1826 Pepopukin in Corsica - Arthur Young (1741-1820)
1819 The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo - Robert C. Sands (1799-1832)
1836 Clarimonde - Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)

Buy today: https://amzn.to/32sfNl2

#BlackFridayHorrorBook #VampireTales #Vampirestories #vampireshortstories #horroranthology #horrorstories

The Unholy Compact Abjured by Charles Pigault-Lebrun (1753-1835)

 

The Unholy Compact Abjured was published by French novelist Charles Pigault-Lebrun (1753-1835) in 1825. This is a very early vampire story and was only the fourth published in the English language. "The Vampyre" by John Polidori in 1819, "The Black Vampyre" by Robert Sands was also published in 1819 and "Wake Not the Dead" by Ludwig Tieck in 1823 are the prior three vampyre tales.

They are included in The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology. "The Unholy Compact Adjured" is not, however, since it is rather flamboyant and fails to reach the level of character and story-line of the others. It is still worth a read on a dark night.

#vampireStories #BestVampireStories #AndrewBarger #LycanStories #UnholycompactAdjured #vampires #classicVampires 

A New English Translation of "The Vampire of the Carpathian Mountains" by Alexandre Dumas

In 1848 Alexandre Dumas published "The Vampire of Carpathian Mountains" (also called "The Pale Lady") in his French short story collection One Thousand and One Ghosts. It is a fantastic book that contains some of the best supernatural tales Dumas ever penned. If you have at least a reading knowledge of the French language, it is well worth the effort of flagging it down on Gutenberg.org or some other site.

Of course if your French needs a bit of a refresher from high school, it becomes a more difficult task. This is especially true of Dumas's signature horror tale: "The Vampire of Carpathian Mountains". When BlooDeath: The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849 was compiled, I included a 1848 translation of the Dumas vampire story from the London New Monthly Magazine. It was the rag, after all, that printed John Polidori's "The Vampyre" in 1819, which is also contained in my collection and is considered the first vampire short story to originate in the English language. So I figured the New Monthly Magazine knew a thing or two about vampire stories and would give the English translation the attention it rightly deserved.

Only after I published the classic vampire anthology did I realize I was wrong. It was brought to my attention that the original French version by Dumas included a poem that was nowhere to be found in English translation by theNew Monthly Magazine. Not only that, but the ending seemed rushed. I turned paler than a person under the throes of vampirism. I had done what is a no-no for one of my collections--I had published an abridged version of a classic short story and fallen victim the horrible magazine practice of trying to save space on the printed page.

With the aid of a translator in Montreal and a little help from online translators, I went to work. A month later I had in front of me an English translation of The Vampire of the Carpathian Mountains in a form that is much closer to what Dumas originally intended. I immediately updated the ebook versions of the collection and they are live now with the non-abridged story. I hope you enjoy it and forgive my faux pas.

#VampireCarpathianMountains #DumasVampireStory

The Vampire Arnod Short Story of 1849 Link and Descrpition

Not many vampire stories were published in the English language from 1800-1849. Those that were, however, are very interesting. One of them found during research for my vampire anthology is The Vampire Arnod published in 1849. The story did not make as the very best for this period, but it is still good. It appeared in The New Monthly Magazine on page 190 and tells of a scary man who lives in a village near Belgrade. I won't give away the plot of this very short horror story, but it's worth a read if you are into classic vampire stories.