Modern stories featuring creatures of the night are characterised by bloodthirsty undying and undead romances which are ruled by animalistic desire. Given the fact that there are tales of voracious, cannibalistic creatures dating back millennia, how exactly did we arrive at this rather sensual intersection?
An abhorrence of the natural order, a vampire is a creature which never dies. Accordingly, their demonic existence is therefore cursed with an array of weaknesses to balance their inherently unnatural nature: the voracious need to feed on vital human essence, a deadly aversion to sunlight and signs and symbols of the divine, as well as wooden stakes pierced through the heart.
Other well-known apotropaics include garlic, wild rose, hawthorn or mustard seeds, though these are most common in European traditions. Without them, vampires – or vampyrs – would be malignly natured godlike figures – unkillable rulers of the underworld and all its demonic glory. With their fallibility, they are sometimes represented as servants of Satan, and other times as lonely, cursed nightwalkers.
Despite their contemporary placement at the centre of immortal love stories, historical vampires weren’t exactly romantic. Ruled by bloodthirst and gore and imbued with a sensual predatorial edge designed to entrap victims, their origins are popularly said to lie in Vlad Drăculea – also known as Vlad the Impaler.
Though folkloric iterations of immortal beings which feed off human beings date back to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and more, it was tales of our bloodthirsty fiend Vlad which arguably catalysed the trajectory of vampire lore as we know it today, due to its relationship to Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897.
Our Vlad ruled Walachia, Romania on and off between 1448 and 1477. He staggeringly fought off the Ottoman Empire and earned his nickname because he favoured killing enemies by impaling them on a wooden stake. It’s also said that Vlad Drăculea would dine among and off his dying victims, dipping his bread in their blood – an abhorrent subversion of the holy communion.
Though some historians refute that Stoker’s Dracula was based on the Romanian ruler, their similarities are impossible to ignore – plus, ignoring them only confuses us more. How did Stoker dream up such horrors? When did ancient tales of bloodthirsty demons intersect with sensual humanoids who survived off blood, travelled with soil from their homeland, and slept in coffins?
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The 19th-century writer Emily Gerard wrote a series of books on Transylvanian folklore following time spent in Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, where her husband was stationed.
Her works The Land Beyond the Forest (1890) and essay “Transylvanian Superstitions” are said to have introduced Stoker to the creature Nosferatu, believed in firmly by Romanian peasants and warded off by wooden stakes and severed heads with mouths full of garlic. Any human killed by the bloodthirsty demon would be turned into a soulless vampire. Perhaps that’s what happened to Vlad, and what made him so unconscionable.
The exact origins of vampirism remain impossible to pinpoint, though surviving tales from Transylvania and Eastern Europe broadly tend to reign supreme – with folkloric variations depending on location. And the romance of it all? Aside from offering a predatorial advantage, stories both ancient and new always come back to the transgressive nature of bodily desire.
There are a surprisingly limited number of brilliant vampire novels to sink your teeth into, despite how ubiquitous vampire-centric media has been for the last few decades. Perhaps it’s the rather intimidating nature of the subject matter; the sheer intensity and depth of the lore behind it, and the thousands of avenues worth taking when delving into storylines regarding the horrifying creatures of the night.
It’s why the few, outstanding options we gothic readers have on our bookshelves are so beloved and widely renowned. Whether you’re exploring the genre for the first time, looking to get the blood-pumping after a hiatus, or are a seasoned vampire hunter – we’ve curated a selection of novels to suit your highly particular taste.
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Dracula by Bram Stoker
Whether you’ve consumed countless retellings of the Dracula myth in popular literature or are exploring the realms of vampiric history for the first time, there is no tale of supernatural horror quite like Stoker’s historical feat.
Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to aid his wealthy client Count Dracula in purchasing a London home. While staying within the Count’s castle walls, Harker makes a series of gruesome discoveries which seem to correlate with spontaneous, violent events across England.
Buy now £6.98, Amazon
‘Salem’s Lot
There’s something about supernatural fiction taking place within small towns in the United States which affects the soul like no other. Stephen King is the master of such work, and ‘Salem’s Lot might just make you believe in vampires once and for all.
It takes place in a small New England town in which strange occurrences are commonplace. The frame narrative is spearheaded by Ben Mears, who returns to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine to write a novel about the local haunted house which fascinated him from a young age.
Buy now £11.65, Amazon
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
A fantasy novel written with romantics and dark academia enthusiasts in mind, A Discovery of Witches is about a centuries-old vampire, a reluctant witch and a mysterious alchemical manuscript hidden in the depths of Oxford’s Bodleian library. An object desperate to be discovered, Diana Bishop unwittingly comes across the ancient, bewitched text during the course of her research – and it changes her existence forever.
Buy now £8.22, Amazon
Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Simultaneously deeply moving and incredibly horrifying, Lindqvist’s vampire tale is like no other. Set in a Swedish suburb in 1981, 12-year-old Oskar strikes up an unlikely friendship with his new next-door neighbour. Eli doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat during the day. Oskar knows there is something off about her, but is fascinated by her nonetheless, as she offers him an escape from the daily horrors of his school bullies.
Buy now £10.99, Amazon
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Originally published in 2006, The Historian is a cult classic among lovers of the dark academia genre, which would’ve been referred to as gothic fantasy at the time.
Through the voice of an unnamed female narrator, we are plunged into a metaphysical, palimpsestic narrative which begins upon her discovery of an ancient book and collection of letters in her father’s library. Little does the teen protagonist know, she has stumbled upon a mystery which is her birthright to solve.
She must discover the truth behind Vlad the Impaler by crossing barriers of time, geographical borders, and the line between fantasy and historical truth.
Buy now £7.99, Amazon
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
The first of an eye-watering 13 books within the Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire is well worth reading beyond ogling at Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in the beloved 1994 film. Originally published in 1976, the gothic horror follows the strangely moralistic vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, who tells the story of his cursed and bloodthirsty life to a reporter referred to only as ‘the boy’.
Buy now £9.39, Amazon
Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker
A prequel to Bram Stoker’s masterpiece written by his great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker and American author J.D. Barker, the thrilling novel references the journals Dracula’s original author kept while writing the novel, its manuscript, the unpublished first 100 pages of its original manuscript and more. A veritable thrill for fans of the iconic vampire story, it follows a 22-year-old Bram Stocker after a terrifying interaction with a vile and ungodly beast.
Buy now £10.95, Amazon
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Offering a contemporary spin on traditional vampire tales, Kohda’s novel centres around young, mixed-race vampire Lydia who is navigating the balance between her inherent desire to live like a human and her instinctual desire for human blood.
The half-human, half-vampire is always desperately hungry yet never quite full – she craves sashimi, ramen and onigiri but can only digest incredibly difficult-to-source pig’s blood from her local butcher. It’s a story of female appetite and social alienation, serving as an allegory for the female experience in the modern world.
Buy now £9.99, Amazon
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
Though many consider Bram Stoker’s Dracula to be the first work of popular fiction featuring a vampire, it was actually Le Fanu’s Carmilla – which was originally published in 1872 (26 years before Stoker’s novel). A sapphic tale with a female vampire at its centre, it’s a remarkably contemporarily minded tale and an essential addition to any vampire enthusiast’s bookshelf.
Buy now £6.99, Amazon
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Many journalists and critics appear to leave Stephenie Meyer’s 2005 crowning achievement, and the very reason vampire fiction continues to enjoy such a prosperous contemporary resurgence, out of their supernatural fiction round-ups – but not I.
I consider myself to be a veritable and unabashed Twilight apologist, and while Meyer’s writing and vampire lore doesn’t remotely compare to that of Stoker or Le Fanu, there’s a reason the series continues to capture our imaginations. An immortal love story for the ages in which the lion falls in love with the lamb, every vampire enthusiast should read Twilight and least once.
Buy now £9.39, Amazon
