Description:
A study that moves the changing historical image of the vampire from the margins to the heart of Anglo-American culture. Beginning with Byron and Polidori, Rymer and LeFanu, Auerbach shows how the character of the vampire offered an intimacy--often homoerotic--that threatened the class structure and the authority of husbands and fathers. Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' ended this tradition, introducing a tyrannical vampire to late Victorian readers who where haunted by a monster of their own making--the clinical version of the homosexual. She then examines a vast range of material from the 20th century. She concludes on a note of hope, seeing the vampire reborn in a female tradition in the work of Anne Rice and others.
