Elsewhere on this blog there has been a reference to a list of vampire books compiled by Anthony Hogg on Amazon: The Complete Vampirologist's Library. I have myself a couple of times considered compiling an annotated list of books, but the problem is that some books will be in German, some in English, and maybe a couple of books will be in other languages, and that might make it hard to compile an Amazon list of all the books. However, the most comprehensive and useful bibliography online is probably Clemens Ruthner's Forschungslitteratur: Vampirismus - Kommentierte interdisziplinäre Auswahlbibliografie, i.e. research litterature on vampirism - an annotated, interdisciplinary, selected bibliography. It also includes literature on Dracula etc., and you may disagree on some of the comments, but I found it very useful when I first found it. It's from 2003, so obviously newer books are not included.
Note: An updated edition of Ruthner's bibliography can be found in Bertschik and Tuczay's Poetische Wiedergänger (Francke Verlag, 2005).
2 comments:
My frequent perusing into books on vampirism, has turned up many foreign titles.
Unfortunately, English is the only language I have any grasp on, so I certainly feel like I'm missing out on a dearth of material out there...which seems to be the way for many authors of vampirological literature, too.
As someone who admires your work on these blogs, I encourage you to compile your proposed bibliography - regardless of common accessibility to the titles you recommend.
Think of it as "only true vampire scholars need apply!".
I will consider doing so.
However, there are probably a couple of books in English which are not usually referred to in books on vampires. I state this because I can think of one particular example: Volume 5 of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe which is very influenced by Gabor Klaniczay's study of the relationship between witchcraft persecution and vampire cases in the Eighteenth century. This is an interesting book that particularly looks at the decline of witch-trials and the enlightened views on witchraft, and it includes a few passages on vampires. So for an understanding of the vampire in a broader historical setting this book IMHO is worth reading.
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