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Title: Blood & Roses: The Vampire in 19th Century Literature by Adele O. Gladwell ISBN: 1-871592-14-3 Publisher: Subterranean Co Pub. Date: 01 June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.98

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Compilation of Gothic Short Stories
Comment: (Note: I have the 1992 edition.)
I have to disagree with the other reviewer; I enjoyed the introductory critical essay, "The Erogenous Disease." Vampires and sex go together like ... blood and roses?
I always want to know what stories are included in anthologies and its usually never listed, which drives me batty, so here they are: The Vampyre by John Polidori, Smarra (an excerpt) by Charles Nodier, The Beautiful Dead by Theophile Gautier, Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe, The Feast of Blood (an excerpt) by J.M. Rymer, Hane Eyre (excerpts) by Charlotte Bronte, The Vampire's Metamorphoses by Charles Baudelaire, The House and the Brain by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Phantoms by Ivan Turgenev, Madoror - The First Song by Isidore Ducasse, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, La-Bas (an excerpt) by Joris-Karl Huysmans, The Picture of Dorian Gray (an excerpt) by Oscar Wilde, The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen, The True Story of A Vampire by Count Stenbock, and Dracula (yea!) (excerpts) by Bram Stoker.
For the selections that are only excerpts, I recommend reading the whole thing if you haven't already. There are also a few nice (freakish) illustrations.

Rating: 3
Summary: Good stories, bizarre introduction
Comment: Once you get past the introduction and into the actual stories, this is a reasonable enough compilation of vampire stories. Unfortunately, the 'introduction' fails to introduce the collection adequately; it looks more like an essay on the topic "Vampires in fiction as subversion of the Oppressive Male Patriarchy: discuss"... The purpose of an introduction is to introduce the stories that follow it; the closest Ms. Gladwell's introduction comes is to occasionally draw on examples from the stories to support her own points.

While sexuality is a major part of the mystique of the vampire, Ms. Gladwell does her readers a disservice by concentrating on it to the exclusion of all other considerations; also, by treating the stories as supporting material for her essay rather than the other way around. In comparison, Christopher Frayling's anthology 'The Vampyre: Lord Ruthven to Count Dracula' has a much more balanced and informative introduction.

Rating: 5
Summary: WOW!
Comment: I loved this book. It strikes the gothic romantic in all of us!!