A Feast of Blood: the Vampire in the Nineteenth Century
We invite essay proposals on the vampire figure in the long nineteenth century. Our edited collection will look at the vampire figure’s rise in popularity throughout the period and across a range of literary texts.
When we think of the Victorian vampire, Dracula is usually the first name that comes to mind. But there were many stories of vampires before and contemporary to Stoker’s novel. We welcome papers that address these many ‘other’ vampires, from Byron’s and Polidori’s early stories of this monstrous figure, to the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire, Carmilla’s parasitic lesbian lover, the Spanish vampire in Olalla, and the transatlantic threat in Blood of the Vampire. We are especially interested in working with authors from different disciplines, including literary studies, history, gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, economics, history of science, etc.
Possible topics include:
- The early vampire narratives of Polidori and/or Byron
- Vampire folklore in the nineteenth century
- The vampire and the penny dreadful
- The ‘Other’ 1897 vampire novel: Blood of the Vampire
- Dracula’s literary influences
- Stoker’s short story, “Dracula’s Guest”
- Lesbian vampires in the Victorian Period
- Vampires and the rise of class in the nineteenth century
- Vampires and werewolves in Emily Gerard’s writing
- The nineteenth-century American vampire (eg Freeman’s “Luella Miller”)
- The vampire in Marx’s economic writings
- Vampire fiction after Darwin
- The vampire and Victorian technologies of mass reproduction
- Vampires in nineteenth-century short fiction
- Vampires and Victorian food
- Vampire fiction at the fin-de-siècle
Proposals of 400-500 words should be submitted along with a 60-word author biography and one-page cv to Brooke Cameron (brooke.cameron@queensu.ca) by 31 January 2019. We will notify applicants of results by 31 March 2019. Following acceptance, final papers should be approximately 8,000 words long and will be due by 01 Sept 2019. Routledge has expressed interest in this collection.