The Blood is the Life: An Anthology of Early Vampire Fiction

This anthology is the definitive collection of classic/early vampire fiction. It is broken into three sections: the first is for classic vampire stories, the second is dedicated to psychic vampirism, and the last contains a few stories which are frequently listed as vampire stories, but are not actually about vampires. There are a total of 18 stories, plus two appendices.

The stories contain the original illustrations from their first publications, and there are three of the editor’s original photographs at the section breaks. There is also a clickable table of contents for easy navigation through the text. 

The first appendix details a few select cases of real life vampires that may have served as inspiration for many of the stories within the anthology. The second appendix, Sacred Blood, is an essay about the sacredness of blood throughout history and the major world religions. 

Approx. 536 pages or 156,837 words long.

Also available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Nook, and Kobo.

Table of Contents:

Part I: Early Vampire Fiction

Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu

The Vampyre; A Tale by John William Polidori

The Singular Death of Morton by Algernon Blackwood

For The Blood Is The Life by F. Marion Crawford

Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker

Ligeira by Edgar Allen Poe

Schalken The Painter by J. Sheridan LeFanu

The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson

Let Loose by Mary Cholmondeley

The Green Picture by Charles Skinner

The True Story of a Vampire by Count Eric Stenbock

Part II: Psychic Vampires

Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The Transfer by Algernon Blackwood

The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Viereck

The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Part III: Not Quite Vampires

Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev

Morella by Edgar Allen Poe

The Mortal Immortal by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Appendix 1: Real Cases of Vampires

Appendix 2: Sacred Blood