Vampires. Origins and Resurrection. From Folklore to Count Dracula

The history of vampires traces back to Eastern European villages in the 18th century, when rumors of bodies rising from the dead swept across Europe and caused mass hysteria. From the first stories of vampirism, Christopher Frayling explores how and why vampires became one of the most enduring figures in the history of mass culture. How peasant vampires, described by Joseph Pitton de Tournfort and the House of Augustin Calmet, that is, folkloric vampires attacking sheep and cows, turned into aristocratic anti-hero villains of the romantics.

He traces the lineage of the literary vampire from 1816: the story of modern vampires was born – in proper oral form – at a rented holiday villa overlooking Lake Geneva on the night of June 17, 1816, when the weather was unusually damp and the atmosphere unusually charged. On that day, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley gathered at Villa Diodati to tell made-up ghost stories, but as a result, that evening saw the birth of the literary vampire and Frankenstein. The author then discusses the artistic works that were written between Polidori's "The Vampire" (1819) and perhaps the most famous vampire of all time, Stoker's "Dracula" (1897).

The author of the book, Sir Christopher Frayling – a cultural historian and the author of numerous publications on various topics, from xenophobia to westerns. He also served as the rector of the Royal College of Art in London from 1996 to 2009, where he remains an honorary professor of cultural history to this day.