Of all the vampire anthologies I’ve read over the years, Alan Ryan’s The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (1987) remains my favorite. Ryan takes a chronological approach and this tends to show the evolution of vampire tales over more than a century.
“Good Lady Ducayne” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon impressed me so much, I ordered a collection of Braddon stories. Braddon’s moody vampire tale captures the angst that tends to be essential in this type of fiction. Of course, “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu is a classic and widely anthologized. But, for me, the stories that I most enjoyed in The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories starts with “A Rendezvous in Averoigne” by Clark Ashton Smith. I’m a huge Clark Ashton Smith fan and he’s at the top of his game in this story.
“Shambleau” by C. L. Moore, a story both famous and brilliant, takes vampires to Mars. I’m also fond of “School for the Unspeakable” by Manly Wade Wellman with its haunting ending.
The last third of The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories presents many of the best vampire stories ever written: “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” by Fritz Leiber, “The Mindworm” by C. M. Kornbluth, “Place of Meeting” by Charles Beaumont, “The Living Dead” by Robert Bloch, and “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal” by Robert Aickman.
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories includes two novellas, “Cabin 33” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (a Saint-Germain story) and “Unicorn Tapestry” by Suzy McKee Charnas which really creeped me out.
If you’re looking for best vampire anthology, give The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories a try. I wish Alan Ryan would publish a sequel featuring the best vampire tales since the mid-1980s to the present. Do you have a favorite vampire story? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction (Vampires) by Alan Ryan — xiii
Fragment of a Novel (1816)
George Gordon, Lord Byron — 1
The Vampyre (1819)
John Polidori –7
Varney the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood (excerpt) (1845)
James Malcolm Rymer — 25
The Mysterious Stranger (1860)
Anonymous — 36
Carmilla (1872)
J. Sheridan Le Fanu — 71
Good Lady Ducayne (1896)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon — 138
Dracula’s Guest (1897)
Bram Stoker — 163
Luella Miller (1903)
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman — 175
For the Blood Is the Life (1911)
F. Marion Crawford — 188
The Transfer (1912)
Algernon Blackwood — 203
The Room in the Tower (1912)
E. F. Benson — 213
An Episode of Cathedral History (1919)
M. R. James — 225
A Rendezvous in Averoigne (1931)
Clark Ashton Smith — 241
Shambleau (1933)
C. L. Moore — 255
Revelations in Black (1933)
Carl Jacobi — 282
School for the Unspeakable (1937)
Manly Wade Wellman — 301
The Drifting Snow (1939)
August Derleth — 311
Over the River (1941)
P. Schuyler Miller — 322
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1949)
Fritz Leiber — 334
The Mindworm (1950)
C. M. Kornbluth — 349
Drink My Blood (1951)
Richard Matheson — 362
Place of Meeting (1953)
Charles Beaumont — 371
The Living Dead (1967)
Robert Bloch — 376
Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal (1975)
Robert Aickman — 382
The Werewolf and the Vampire (1975)
R. Chetwynd-Hayes — 415
Love-Starved (1979)
Charles L. Grant — 441
Cabin 33 (1980)
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro — 451
Unicorn Tapestry (1980)
Suzy McKee Charnas — 505
Following the Way (1982)
Alan Ryan — 562
The Sunshine Club (1983)
Ramsey Campbell — 574
The Men & Women of Rivendale (1984)
Steve Rasnic Tem — 579
Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur De Feu (1984)
Tanith Lee — 588
Appendix I: Vampire Novels — 613
Appendix II: Vampire Movies — 618
I agree it’s a great anthology, George. The Table of Contents reads like a who’s who of some of my favorite authors. Despite having a lot of familiar stories, you can’t go wrong with this one. Alas, your wish for Alan Ryan to do a follow-up anthology will not come to be. Ryan died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer.
Jerry, I’m sorry to hear about Alan Ryan’s bout with pancreatic cancer. Two of my friends have lost that fight, too.
Favorite Vampire story? Not really. But my favorite Vampire Novel is Theodore Sturgeon’s SOME OF YOUR BLOOD.
Dan, I need to reread Sturgeon’s SOME OF YOUR BLOOD!
I’ve never seen this anthology but nearly all the authors are familiar, as are many of the stories. My favorites here would be “Shambleau” and “Pages From a Young Girl’s Journal”. Ryan was a pretty familiar figure from the Eighties horror scene, and I read a couple of his novels but don’t remember anything about them. The anthology is apparently still in print. Amazon also has a lot of stuff by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of the few authors included who was unfamiliar to me.
Michael, I hope to review a Mary Elizabeth Braddon collection in the weeks ahead. And, there are plenty of copies of THE PENGUIN BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES online for a pittance.
Michael, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was best known for LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET, the “most sensational of sensational novels.” It made her famous and very rich. The book has been filmed at least six times (the last as part of the PBS MYSTERY series), was adapted at least once for radio and four times for the stage.
Jerry, thanks for the information on Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I’ll have to check out that PBS MYSTERY series.
Favorite story would be Pages From A Young Girl’s Journal by Robert Aickman. Novel would be Dracula by Bram Stoker and Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon.
Steve, I have a couple collections of Robert Aickman stories I need to read soon. Brilliant writer!
Nice collection. I’ve read a couple of Braddon’s mystery stories lately and was impressed too. Of course, I know a lot of these authors and have read several of the stories. No particular favorite vampire stories comes to mind.
Jeff, I’m impressed by the Braddon story in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES. I’m hoping the collection of her stories comes close that level of quality.
I’ve never seen this book before but it looks solid and an Edward Gorey cover is always a good sign. I’m familiar with many of these writers and stories and the Wilkins-Freeman is a particular favorite, ditto the Leiber (which was made into a memorable “Night Gallery” episode. Wellman is a fine and sadly underrated writer so I’m curious to read this story. I know Derleth gets a bad wrap but his work has actually aged better than many of his contemporaries. I have two volumes of Smith long waiting to be read so I guess your recommendation, George, is all I need to pull them off the book shelf.
Michael Sims put together a nice collection of Victorian vampire stories, “Dracula’s Guest,” about a decade ago, that overlaps this here and there and is well worth checking out. It includes my all time favorire vampire story, the dreamy and wonderfully moody “The Canal,” by Everil Worrell (sadly made into one of the lesser “Night Gallery” episodes).
Thanks for the tip, George. I’ll be looking for a copy of this online.
Byron, I’ll track down a copy of Michael Sims DRACULA’S GUEST. Thanks for the heads up! And, I probably need to watch those NIGHT GALLERY episodes again!
NG’s version of “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” is not bad, but not a touch on the source story…sadly, the only other Leiber adaptation did they did was of “The Dead Man”, and that one was a botched job.
Todd, I’ve found NIGHT GALLEY to be less excellent than TWILIGHT ZONE. Good, but not great.
Matters haven’t been helped by the attempts to make the NG segments fit into neat 20-odd-minute packages for syndication…some are chopped up, and some are chopped up with irrelevant or repeated bits and pieces to fit the procrustean syndie-package requirements. Usually this leaves the variable originals incoherent and duller, or even duller, than they were at first broadcast, whether in the 45-minute or hour slots for NIGHT GALLERY.
Derleth’s fiction is still widely respected, I’d suggest, once we’re past his terrible attempts to remake Lovecraft’s fragments into a kind of Christian framework.
His horror in his own voice, his regional historical and contemporary fiction, and even his Sherlockiana are still fondly remembered and read.
Todd, I like Derleth’s Sherlockiana.
OK, you sold me. Just bought the COMPLETE WORKS of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (includes 5 collections of stories) on Kindle for 99 cents! You cannot go wrong.
Jeff, I bought a book collection of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, but I’m tempted by the Kindle collections. I’ve only read the story in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES, but I’m hoping her other stories are nearly as good.
As a “pure” SF fan I find it interesting that there are more than a dozen SF authors represented here – some of their stories I remember.
Maybe for them it was a kind of time-off from the hard work of inventing and writing logical SF stories?
Wolf, or it was an editor offering them Good Money for a vampire story.
Or was it that they enjoyed writing good horror fiction? I have little patience for this kind of snobbery between kinds of fiction, I’m afraid. And there’s nothing Illogical about horror, except when it helps to have that element to it…nor are all sf stories, nor even all good ones, inherently logical.
Todd, I think the writers of that era wrote SF and Horror depending on the market for stories.
Or was it that they enjoyed writing good horror fiction? I will never endorse this kind of snobbery between kinds of fiction, I’m afraid. And there’s nothing Illogical about horror, except when it helps to have that element to it…nor are all sf stories, nor even all good ones, inherently logical.
Or did they just enjoy writing good horror fiction, since they are excellent writers who presumably loved the form?
Todd, many writers like Leiber and Bloch and Matheson moved back and forth between SF and Horror. I suspect they enjoyed writing both types of stories.
Not liking vampire or zombie stories, or horror in general, puts me at a disadvantage this this of year. Thus, as good, or at least enjoyable as this and your other seasonal offerings may be, I’ll pass.
Rick, we’re just celebrating Halloween with a vampire theme this year. We’ll go back to our original postings next week.
As I said yesterday, I’m not a fan of horror! When I was a kid horror movies scared the pants off of me, but now they bore me! I’m sure many of the stories in this collection are well written, but the subject matter doesn’t excite me!
Bob, the Splatter Horror genre bores me, too.
Or was it that they enjoyed writing good horror fiction? I have little patience for this kind of snobbery between kinds of fiction, I’m afraid. And there’s nothing Illogical about horror, except when it helps to have that element to it…nor are all sf stories, nor even all good ones, inherently logical.
Among my favorite vampire fiction would be ANNO DRACULA and some of the other fiction in that sequence by Kim Newman; among the better work in the field that is too often overlooked is Les Daniels novels sequence beginning with THE BLACK CASTLE.
Todd, you probably won’t be surprised to learn I have both Les Daniel’s sequence and the vampire novels of Kim Newman…as well as Newman’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Now, to find the time to read them all!