Vampires (24 page)

The tone of
Interview with the Vampire
is sombre, and Rice has said that the mood of it was influenced by her daughter’s death from leukaemia. It continues to be regarded by many critics as her best book, and in 1994, was made into a major film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst. Later books,
The Vampire Lestat
and
The Queen of the Damned
, were filmed under the latter title in 2002. These films, especially
Interview with the Vampire
, brought renewed interest in Rice’s work, so much so that to date, her books have sold nearly one hundred million copies. Today, despite the fact that some critics have argued that the later novels in the series lack the originality of
Interview
, she continues to be one of the most widely read authors in the world.

By John Polidori (1819). Polidori was Lord Byron’s friend and physician, and his story was inspired by a fragment written by the famous romantic poet . Polidori’s great innovation was to change the vampire from a medieval monster dripping with gore to a refined aristocrat : the pale, seductive Lord Ruthven.

By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872). Le Fanu was the greatest ghost story writer of the Victorian era. In Carmilla, a Gothic novella, he turned his attention to the vampire myth, with a sensational tale of love between a young woman and a female vampire that shocked his readers.

By Bram Stoker (1897). This is the novel that started the vampire craze. Stoker was an Irish writer who drew on real historical figures, such as Vlad the Impaler, and European mythology, to create the tale of Count Dracula, who lures his victims to their doom in his Transylvanian castle.

By Richard Matheson (1954). This highly influential novel mixed horror with science fiction, telling the story of how one man fights a plague of disease-ridden vampires who threaten to destroy human life on earth. The theme of apocalypse proved to be very popular in cold-war America.

By Stephen King (1975). The second of King’s novels, Salem’s Lot tells the story of a writer who comes back to his hometown in Maine, only to find it threatened by vampires. It’s a classic King tale about evil flourishing in the very midst of suburban normality.

By Anne Rice (1976-2003).
Interview with the Vampire
was the first in a series chronicling the life of Lestat de Liancourt, an eighteenth-century French nobleman, and his many subsequent incarnations. The Chronicles is one of the most successful vampire series of all time, with sales of over 80 million.

By Whitley Streiber (1981). Miriam Blaylock is a beautiful female vampire who takes human lovers and transforms them into hybrid vampire/humans, disposing of them when she is tired of them. Streiber describes vampires as a species akin to humans, with a set of practical problems such as how to acquire and dispose of bodies.

By Robert McCammon (1981). This novel imagines a horror scenario in which Los Angeles is taken over by vampires, transforming it into a city of the dead. The novel is currently out of print, and McCammon regards it as inferior to his later works, and has refused to let it be reprinted.

By George R.R. Martin (1982). This highly regarded historical novel is set in Mississippi in the mid nineteenth century. A tale of steamboats, vampire hunters, and the darker side of New Orleans, it has been described as ‘Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain’, and continues to attract awards.

By Tim Powers (1989). Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, and John Polidori feature in this novel, which imagines that these real historical figures were members of a vampire-like clan of succubi, lamia, fairies and other mythological creatures – some of them evil, but others good.