An interesting look at vampires throughout popular culture, but this just wasn’t up my alley, a bit due to the repetitive summary-laden nature of much of it, but also because I do tend to be most interested in the original folkloric and literary vampire culture–not so much the mid-20th century onwards stuff.

Fenn does state in her introduction that this book is intended to be a more casual, fan-based look at vampires and how they manifest in pop culture throughout time. She splits her chapters up into the themes/tropes surrounding vampires–their general mystery of them, immortality, forbidden sexuality, wealth–and gives examples, usually chronologically, of how vampire characters in various mediums have met these tropes. Unsurprisingly, most of these examples are more modern movies or tv shows, so I was not familiar with many of them, and while Fenn summarizes the scenes or characters in question well, she almost OVER-summarizes them, while still not making me very interested in reading more about it. It is a difficult thing to find unique interpretations for multiple types of media when, even with their variations, they’re still using the same exact trope. The analyses given are decent, if mainly more fan-based than academic, but since I wasn’t terribly interested in the media used as examples, nor was the book written in a way to captivate me into being interested in them, I just ended up skimming after the first few chapters. The chapters are also overly-long and never really conclude, and tie together with a chapter thesis, so the focus despite the chapter themes, seemed lacking.

If you are more inclined to enjoy more modern interpretations of vampires and their lore, by all means, you will likely find this MUCH more interesting than I did. It just didn’t have enough traditional myth and history in it…. which I suppose I should have gleaned from the title, those aren’t exactly the “popular” culture any more, however much they may have shaped it.

I absolutely LOVE this book. It has so much information about vampires and various vampire tropes throughout the history of media. I am definitely going to use this book as a reference for my own writing.

3 stars from me, which means I like it! A History of the Vampute in Popular Culture is absolutely fascinating. Until now, I had not thought much about the vampire . . . except for when I am reading about one . . . or a family of them. How intrigued I was to learn that there are different species of vampires! For anyone who has enjoyed tales such as Dracula, Interview With the Vampire, and even Twilight, throw yourself into this book and learn more about the vampire!

In this book, the author takes us on a journey to the beginning of all vampire stories as we know and love them today. From classics like Lord Byron or Horace Walpole to today's vampire in TV, music and even musicals.
The author not only includes folklore and historical cases of "vampirism", but also tries to explain psychologically why the myth does not cease to fascinate us even after more than 150 years in literature and modern media.
A must-read for every vampire fan.

In general, this book is a fun exploration into the world of vampires, and the larger implication of vampires in popular culture. Firstly, I am so glad this book did not end up as "Yea this whole thing started from Dracula" because that is simply not true. Vampires have been around for as long as superstition has been around. I really loved how the author connected the human psyche and experience to the creation and propagation of the myth. It's so easy to just say, "Yea vampires are sexy" but that can't just be the bare bones of the popularity. Fenn talks about the eroticism of vampires, but also the implications of life and death, as well as the male and female and experience. Highly recommend it as a fun non-fiction read.

Over the years vampires and other supernatural creatures have become more popular both in books and also films. As someone who does watch and also read books that contain vampires, I was interested to see what the authors' view was.

The author steps into a world that has its origins in myth, legend and folklore. She references some earlier literature as well as more modern both as a view to the points she makes and also to give various examples.

Referencing early works and how they were portrayed by writers and also how they were adapted to film. How they were received by censors, readers and viewers. She uses history to good effect as changing attitudes have given over to a wider acceptance of all things fanged.

More modern film and TV have glamorised the vampire, they are sharp-dressed, well educated and not all are the blood-sucking, bodice-ripping fiends. She delves into how they have become the "good guy" in some respects rather than a creature that should be cowered from.

This was a really entertaining read with many, many references to films and books across the years. It does give an insightful look at how perceptions have changed and how they have become more socially acceptable and almost have morals that mirror some of our own, humanised if you like.

This is a book that I found interesting and also thought-provoking giving an insight into the authors' thoughts on the legend of the vampire. It is one I would recommend.

I enjoyed learning about the changing views on vampires throughout the years in this book. Some of the themes were familiar, though I wasn't familiar with all the references. The main aim of the book is to discuss the changing opinions on vampires and their prevalence in popular culture. As a non-fiction book, it does a good job to examine various aspects of the history of the idea of vampires and also the subcultures that are influenced by the idea of vampires. There is a handy “Short Chronology of Vampire History” near the end of the book.

Given that the book didn’t intend to be an encyclopedia, I didn’t expect it to cover as much ground as it did. It also contained a few interviews on the topic of vampires and the goth subculture.

The media texts covered are many, from books, to movies, to shows, to musicals. The book mentioned Dracula BBC (2020) so the book is very up to date on vampire related shows. Not all media texts get the same amount of space in the book, typically those that had more space were used to illustrate themes or change in opinions of vampires.

My favourite part of the book is seeing how the idea of vampires developed. I enjoyed reading the various explanations for why certain views about vampires could have emerged such as about ‘vampires’ ‘shrieking’ when stabbed. Some of the information I have heard before but there were also some interesting things I have not heard about.

An aspect of the book that I didn’t like as much was the many summaries of the media texts. While they are interesting, I didn’t connect as much to the theme when I haven't watched/read the show/film/book. At the same time, I could still understand the themes so it was just the number of summaries that were a bit much.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book, it was informative and interesting read. The conclusion wrapped up the themes nicely in a satisfying way.

***I received an ARC copy from NetGalley***

Thank you to the publisher and author for the ARC.

I did not enjoy reading "A history of the Vampire in Popular Culture" and I almost DNFed it.

I did like the beginning when the author dove into the history of Vampires from different countries, myths and legends. When we're getting into the pop culture references, there's a lot of info dumping happening and not much new or groundbreaking information and I didn't see the point the author wanted to make. Those chapters felt all over the place and I'd have preferred to go through less examples, but dive deeper into the subject.

Unfortunately not my cup of tea, but I can see other readers enjoying this more than I did.

Thank you Netgalley for granting a wish in exchange for an honest review.

This is an intriguing and fascinating dive into vampire the myth the legend in popular culture. And one that will find great interest from avid fans of that culture. I do have issues with it and one that really irks me, is the fact a lot of the middle section is taken up by verbally abusing and mocking the Twilight sagas, yes for some this is an abomination and should be not read, I am sorry this makes me laugh at the hypocrisy of what this book is trying to achieve and yet at the end still comes out with the usual bullshit pretentious crap. Sorry but if you are going to do something like a history of, please do it well, I have to admit by the end I got thoroughly bored till we came again to some sort of interesting snippets. I didn’t feel like I came away with anything new or enlightened.

I really love this book it was so informed about how we view vampire's and I found a lot I didn't know about, it's interesting how we view them, how things changed from century to century.

Vampires are one of pop culture's most enduring mythological figures, and the possibilities for new types of stories and new lives to give them seems virtually endless. Whether they're enticingly beautiful and seductive or repulsive creatures of the shadows, we return to them again and again. Violet Fenn's History of the Vampire in Popular Culture attempts to examine what about them appeals to us so enduringly by looking at some of her favorite (and not so favorite) examples in literature, film, television, and music. She also weaves in examples of the vampiric myth from all around the world, and interviews several fascinating people, from prominent figures in the Goth scene to descendants of Bram Stoker himself.

While ultimately an interesting and fun read for an afternoon turn, Fenn does circle back to some of her topics and rehash them in essentially the same way in multiple chapters, from Polidori's position as the first vampire author to an endlessly critical (though not unwarranted) reading of the Twilight series. She states up front multiple times that this project is based on her own subjective favorites and is in no way meant to be a necessarily overarching analytical text about all of vampiric history, and the tone of that shows through, for better or worse. It offers enough interesting perspectives to keep you reading, though, and is easy enough to read through in one sitting. Personally I won't soon forget the Hungarian "miracle chicken".

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

An entertaining look into the history of vampires throughout film, novels, and television. The author offers their witty commentary while providing contextual information for a variety of films, television, and books.

I enjoyed the interview with...the vampire. Ha! No, there was an interview at the end with one of the "What We Do In The Shadows" (Film) actors and it was pretty fun to read.

As others said, the book jumps from history to the present day back and forth often but I didn't really mind it too much, though I can understand why it would be difficult to read. I enjoyed the chaotic style and liked reading about some dude from the 1800s and then jumping to the 1980s!

The Twilight bashing was hilarious. Though realistically, the title should be changed to something like "A Look Into Vampires in Pop Culture" rather than "History" because it's really not super detailed on *all* vampire mediums and the author often interjects their sense of humor into the book, which makes it feel less "textbooky' which to me, contradicts the title. I really do enjoy their sense of humor and wit, I feel like it's not a complete history of vampires, just more like a look into how vampires have evolved through different art mediums while giving contextual information for some of the historical angles. And interjecting with how ridiculous Twilight is, haha.

I also hadn't heard of some of these vampire movies so I added them to my to-watch list, so that'll be fun. The author does give enough description and context for the films mentioned so I wasn't entirely lost, despite not having seen half of these films, which I appreciate.

A great read for any vampire fan(g)s!

I am so sorry this has taken me so long to get to doing.
I have been a big fan of Vampires for years and some of my favourite movies include such classic vampires like Dracula, Lesat, Martin and of cause can't forget Edward? Or let's take the other media TV Series we have great Vampires like Barnabas, Angel, Spike, Nick Knight, Mick ST John. Seems everywhere you look there is a new Vampire movie or TV series being made.

So based on that and the fact that two years ago I did a horror marathon and watched 98 horror films and 65 of them happened to be based on Vampires while 30 of them were Dracula I knew I had to read this book.

I was not disappointed from the first page right too the last one I was interested in and invested this book. I even learnt stuff I didnt know like how vampires came to be the the history behind them (I never had dug that far back before) I was also really pleased to see Carmilla was mentioned in here too.

If you love vampires then this is a no brainer GET THIS BOOK you will not regreat it at all.

A great guide to vampire origins and how the idea of vampires has gained speed and ground throughout the years. For anyone who is intrigued by mystical history and the vampire legend!

This is an ARC review. Many thanks to Pen & Sword and Netgalley.

This book is a fun, informative look into, you guessed it, the history of the vampire in popular culture.

As usual, you must read the introduction to know what you're getting into. According to Fenn:
This book is intended as an overview of how vampires are portrayed in popular culture, rather than a chronology or encyclopedia, and as such jumps back and forth across its subjects with gleeful abandon. [...] It is unapologetically weighted toward Western interpretations, because that is where the 'classic' vampire began [...].
Criticisms, then, must be tempered by the author's own admission of the book's aim and potential shortcomings.

This book begins with an overview of the arrival of the "vampire" into Western culture (if this interests you, check out this fantastic book which goes into even more detail on some of the cases Fenn includes). It then begins to delve into Victorian culture, which we continue to conflate with vampires today and not only because that's when they started to make their most popular appearances. To illustrate why that might be, Fenn includes a fantastic quote by Gill Hoffs:
Victorian Britain was a strange cultural mix of glory and guilt, prim delicacy and delight in the macabre. The world was changing at a frightening rate [...] a time of industrial development and discovery, yet [...] newspapers reported incidents of witchcraft as fact.

The rest of this book dissects everything from John Polidori and Lord Byron to Goth culture, What We Do In The Shadows to Twilight. It is expansive and touches on the many different iterations of the vampire in order to ask its ultimate question: Why is the image of the vampire so intoxicating and enduring in our culture? The conclusion that Fenn comes to is twofold. First, the vampire is impervious to the all-too-human condition of change. The vampire is safe from that final death we all must face, there is no unknown "other side" for the vampire. He remains in a state of constancy in our human world and yet in a position above any "normal" human for he will not age and his consciousness will never die (barring, of course, stake- and sunlight-related incidents). Second, "Vampires don't bother pretending to be human. [...] They are fangs and blood and sex and urges the like of which many of us would never even dare utter in our own minds [...]." In other words, only through the vampire are we allowed to live out our basest fantasies of hunger, sex, and giving entirely into temptation and our most primitive, uncivilized desires. This is particularly relevant to female vampires and their relation to (creation by) our cultural fear of women's sexuality. (Quick interjection - Fenn's further exploration of this idea and its relation to early childhood is absolutely fascinating).

One of the weaker points of this book (and I know I just said that I can't exactly fault it for this because Fenn did warn us in her introduction) is that some of the subject jumps are just a little bit jarring (kind of like this sentence). I think the whole experience would have been smoother if she had created chapters around specific books/movies/music instead of specific subjects and their inclusion in certain books/movies/music. For instance, a whole chapter on the 2020 BBC Dracula instead of coming back to it countless times over the course of the book. It would have had a better flow, in my opinion. Then again, she clearly wrote this book the way she did for a reason. My opinion may be the odd one out, here.
I also found that the chapters repeated each other frequently, almost as if they were written as separate essays. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it would also explain some of the subject jumps. Perhaps, then, the book should have been organized around "essays" and not chapters.
Finally, I did not love the inclusion of the interviews at the end. Mostly, it just felt like a way of padding the book. The interviews I did find interesting (Deacon from WWDITS and Dacre Stoker) seemed to have some sort of formatting issue so that the two interviews were melded together without a break, making it hard to tell where Fenn stopped interviewing Deacon and started interviewing Dacre until you're like, "Wait, this is talking about how your relative is Bram Stoker, this isn't Deacon?" Hopefully this will be fixed in further edits.

Overall, this is an interesting and informative look into the popularity and persistence of the vampire in Western popular culture. It presents some really great thinking points and is well written and well-researched. It could do with a bit more editing, in my opinion, but it is at its core an awesome little book and a great addition to the oeuvre of the vampire.

The fascination of vampires...does it revolve around blood, death and sex? I mean the envisioned lust for a vampire story is pretty sexy isn’t it? When one thinks of the film portrayals of vampires, I would say it’s pretty sexy and most lustful, but what goes into the depth of the vampire history?

The vampire is such a bad boy/bad girl image in a fantasy world. That longing for something oh so good, but oh so bad. Deadly, but then, immortal. This book explores their erotic nature, and their origins, along with their appeal in both literature and film. It’s one thing to watch or read a steamy vampire story, but it’s another to explore why they are so appealing, and that’s exactly what this book does.

Although a good mix of history (albeit nothing new that hasn’t already been discussed through books and films) and pop culture, I felt like I was reading information that I already knew. The chapters are pretty long so reading is cumbersome and a bit boring at times, even some content seems repetitive in the chapters, but honestly that is just my personal opinion, and another reader may feel completely opposite. For those reasons, I gave it the rating I did.

I started reading this book and was quickly impressed with the author's way of talking about the subject. I read very few vampire stories these days but will still pick one up once in awhile. This book was interesting and a true reading delight. Written in a way that kept my interest and far from being encyclopedic that it made it a joy to read.

this was a great nonfiction vampire book, I learned a lot from it and never felt bored when reading this. The author was able to create a interesting book and I enjoyed reading this.

Fairly interesting, but badly hampered by the lack of organization - each chapter had a loose theme, but the information presented wasn't necessarily chronological, and often, the theme became vague by the end of the chapter. The final timeline at the end was more helpful in setting out the history of vampires in popular culture than the rest of the book! That said, I still enjoyed this, and anyone with a passing interest in vampires or gothic culture in general would likely enjoy it as well.

From Dracula to True Blood and so many other works in literature, film and television, book does what it says on the tin. Pop culture is rife with vampires and all the different forms these supernatural creatures have taken over the centuries and this book explores many of them. She goes in on certain myths of women bathing in blood and how these people have influenced vampiric women over the years. If you’re interested in a fresh take on vampires in media, I recommend this book.