Vampires and Twentieth Century Literature

By Kathy Mercado
The idea for using vampires as characters in the literary works of the twentieth century was taken from the famous Dracula by Bram Stoker. The novel was then adapted into cinema which was an emerging medium during that time period. Stoker's work, however, was not restricted to the horror and Gothic novels with the description of ghastly deaths and incidents dealing with the dark.

The twin works of Gustave Le Rogue, published in 1908 and 1909 gave an introduction to science fiction and idea of life on other planets. He depicted creatures with wings and blood sucking fangs living on Mars. This was the first time that the trait of wings was given to vampires and from this trait came the connection of vampires and bats.

The first movie that featured vampires was the one that adapted Dracula into cinema. After that, vampires got more spotlight in horror movies that had gothic themes. Science fiction that included vampires was fairly used in cinema. In 2207, Richard Matheson's movie, I am Legend was released and it showed nocturnal creatures surviving on the blood of live human beings. This movie also depicted that Vampirism is a result of the wrong doings of human beings and it also shows that developing a cure for it is possible.

There was a great amount of literary work on Vampires in the later half of the twentieth century. Between 1966 and 1971, Barnabas Collins Series, a work by Marilyn Ross was released which became the first to use vampires in literary works in the forms of sequels and series rather than singular novels. Another series called Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice followed it. Literary works in the form of series that had become common in this period continue to be written even to this date as mega series.