Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller is an expert on Bram Stoker and the novel Dracula, including its history and inspirations. Her many published books include Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition, and Dracula: Sense & Nonsense.

From her Q & A with Alex Bledsoe, author of Blood Grove:

Alex: It seems as if the vampire in traditional folklore was seldom a fully conscious, will-directed creature. At what point did they become so in the popular imagination?

Dr. Miller: This started to happen as the vampire migrated from folklore to literature. The 18th-century reports about vampire sightings in central and eastern Europe coincided with (and may have contributed to) a rising interest in Gothic literature, first in Germany and later in the century, in England. The Gothic movement was part of the broader period of Romanticism, with its challenges to rationalism and its shift of philosophical emphasis to subjectivity, emotion, intuition and the imagination. The adoption of the figure of the vampire was inevitable. Appearing first as a type of "demon lover" in German poetry, the vampire made its way to England where it was embraced by the Romantic poets and shapeshifted into a full-blown aristocrat.

Dracula is the gold standard, but not the first "aristo-vampire." What prompted this shift from peasant revenent to high-born demon?

The first vampire fiction in English literature was The Vampyre. Published in 1819, The Vampyre was written by John William Polidori, who had served as Lord Byron's personal physician for a time until disputes brought an end to the relationship. Polidori clearly modeled his vampire, Lord Ruthven, on...[read on]

Visit Elizabeth Miller's website.

Visit Alex Bledsoe's website, blog, and My Book, The Movie: Alex Bledsoe's Blood Groove.

--Marshal Zeringue