Andrew Barger Interview on The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology

 

As Halloween approaches, Andrew answers questions about The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology

Interview with Andrew Barger

Q1. Why did you focus on the first half of the 19th century for your first vampire anthology?
A1. I knew the first vampire short story written in the English language was "The Vampyre" by John Polidori. He published it in 1819. There was obviously fresh dirt, so to speak, for this period and I started digging. I wanted to start from the beginning just as I did with The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849,The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 and The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849.

Q2. Did you unearth anything of note in vampire lore?
A2. Yes. I was surprised to find the first vampire short story penned by an American that has remained buried for nearly two centuries. It was published only months after Polidori's tale. It was titled "The Black Vampyre" and was published under a pseudonym by a Columbia University Law School graduate. In the book I demonstrate who the actual author was as background to the story. From my research it is also the first short story to advocate freedom for black slaves and to contain a child vampire.

Q3. That is substantial. So you include background information on each story in the collection?
A3. Also author photos, publication dates and a list of stories read at the end of the book.  In the print version I include annotations like I did with the other books.

Q4. You stated that in your estimation Edgar Allan Poe wrote one third of the best horror stories for the fifty years in question. Did Edgar Allan Poe write any vampire stories?

A4. There is much speculation about this. Some assert "Ligeia" and "Berenice" are vampire stories but I dispel this in the Introduction: "With Teeth." In my view Poe did not pen a vampire tale. It is also of note that neither Nathaniel Hawthorne nor Washington Irving wrote a vampire story, either.

Q5. Who are some of the more famous authors in the vampire anthology?
A5. I mentioned John Polidori, Lord Byron's traveling doctor. Alexander Dumas, Joseph le Fanu and Théophile Gautier all have stories in the collection.

Q6. Do you have a favorite?
A6. "Clarimonde" by Gautier is the foremost thing of its kind. Of course Gautier had the advantage of all the great stories that came before his.

Q7. The strangest name has to be "Pepopukin in Corsica." How did you come across it?
A7. It was published in an old magazine in 1826. It is just the third vampire story originally published in the English language. It has not been republished since. The author was not given, only the initials A.Y. I was able to learn that it was Arthur Young who wrote a number of travel books based in France. "Pepopukin in Corsica" is the first vampire story to include poetry.

Q8. Didn't Polidori write "The Vampyre" in response to a bet by Mary Shelley? 
A8. There's a story within a story on that one. Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori challenged one another to write a ghost story. Mary ultimately wrote Prometheus Unbound (that we know now as Frankenstein) and Lord Byron penned a fragment of a vampire story that he never finished. Polidori used the outline and wrote "The Vampyre." It is little known that Polidori put Lord Byron in "The Vampyre" after they had had a falling out. Lord Byron is the vampire himself. He called him Lord Ruthven in the story. I lay out the many similarities between Lord Byron and Lord Ruthven in the background. It's fascinating stuff.

Q9. Another popular vampire story is "Wake Not the Dead."
A9. It was first published in English in 1823 and miss-attributed to Ludwig Tieck. Ernst Raupach is the true author.

Q10. Did you unearth any misconceptions in doing your research?

A10.  Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood, published in 1847 as a serialized Penny Dreadful was the first vampire novel. Bram Stoker's Dracula was not the first, as many people believe.

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Review of "A Descent into the Maelstrom" by Edgar Allan Poe

 

A Descent Into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one of the best horror short stories originally published in the English language (or later translated into English) from 1800-1849. The story is considered as one of Poe's best science fiction tales, yet it contains many horror elements that are original in design and implementation. The story was first published in the May 1841 issue of Graham's Magazine. This is what Robert Armistead Stewart, a professor at Richmond College, had to say about it in 1911:

"A Descent into the Maelstrom" is the most enthralling of that trio of tales of pseudo-science that demonstrate Poe's wizard power of sweeping the reader from the solid basis of human experience into an acceptance of fancies repugnant to all physical laws. In verisimilitude and compelling interest it excels both the MS. Found in a Bottle and Hans Pfaal, and displays its supernatural element in the products of the subtle faculty of exaggeration which Poe may have developed under the stimulus of opium. . . . . The commencement of the tale is abrupt and succinct, in accordance with Poe's dictum in 'Marginalia': 'It is far better that we commence irregularly—immethodically—than that we fail to arrest attention; but the two points, method and pungency, may always be combined.' At all risks, let there be a few vivid sentences imprimis, by way of the electric bell to the telegraph. The vividness of the old man's story is wonderfully enhanced by being told with the localities under review, and the wild welter of wind and water sustains the narrative like some great orchestral accompaniment. The final sentence, allowing for incredulity on the part of the reader, is an artistic touch, and fully worthy of Poe's ingenuity."

Following is one of the most haunting passages of a shipwreck and maelstrom one will find in the literature for this time period:

Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels, and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. "This fir-tree," I found myself at one time saying, "will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears;" and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before.

I find it hard to believe that the protagonist of the horror story would have uttered the words as Poe has presented them, but this is a minor flaw in a major tale with a transitioning plot, terror, and characters that incite emotion to the end.

Buy "The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Horror Anthology"

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