May 30, 2011 Did Twilight start the vampire romance thing?
Question:
Just curiously, was Twilight the book that started the whole thing with vampire romance, followed by many other novels? Or was it a different book?
- 15 comments
- Posted under Book Recommendations
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Chrysdee
said
maybe for this generation, but other than that…NO WAY!!! Have you ever heard of a little thing called Bram Stoker’s Dracula…..thats the original
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Jenn
said
Nope… There were lots of predecessors. Most famously Anne Rice. Most lasciviously, Laurel K. Hamilton.
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M M
said
Certainly not.
It’s been around for ages, so no one writer really started it.
Meyer just scored big with the teen set so it looks like she invented it.
In truth, when she was in HER teens she was reading other romance vamp books, then watered things down for her caffeine-free take on the genre.
She certainly read The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith and the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, as they have too many common elements to be a coincidence.
She would have been 17-19 when the Vampire Diaries came out, in college, which is supposedly when she got the idea to do her own book.
Vampire folklore is as old as humanity, but in literature it got a jolt in 1819 when John Polidori wrote “The Vampire” and introduced “Lord Ruthven” to English literature.
Ruthven was based on Lord Byron and in its time the name “Ruthven” had the same impact on people as “Dracula” does today. They expected a vampire!
Here’s the original story in full. It is in the public domain.
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/vampire/vampyre/index.html
The next most famous vamp was “Varney the Vampire”, 1845-1847, which ran as a serial in newspapers of the time, each chapter ending on a cliffhanger so people would buy the next one to see what happened next.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varney_the_Vampire
Writers were paid a penny a word–the “penny dreadful” originated that way–so a smart writer strung out the story for as long as he could to have a regular income. Varney ran for 220 chapters.
NOW you know why Dickens had such long books. He was also paid a penny a word!
After Varney came Dracula, but the book did not become famous during the writer’s lifetime, and his impoverished widow fought for its copyright from imitators and the film makers who did “Nosferatu.” She won her suit and most of the copies of the film were destroyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula
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Samwise
said
So far as I know, there’s always been a sexual subtext to vampire stories; it’s built in to the concept. Males attack female victims and vice versa, and there’s the matter of penetration. The whole thing is arguably about seduction.
For outright romance, though, you might check out the 1979 film “Love at First Bite” starring George Hamilton, Susan St. James, and Richard Benjamin. A comedy, but definitely also a romance.
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Macabre
said
If anything, Twilight killed true vampires
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Carla
said
Twilight certainly DID NOT start the vampire romance. It was started a LONG time ago. But yoou know that most people don’t like to read because they are too lazy to pick up a book. So, when this book came out….it was mentioned everywhere like if it was a sort of ”invention” and creative idea, which is totally wrong. If you search on past decades, various authors had already made up this story. This is just the only time someone took the enough interest to read it and make a movie about it.
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aida
said
I would say it goes back to Anne Rice’s books, beginning with The Vampire L’Estat. She seems to have been the first author to present vampires in a sympathetic, non-Dracula way. (Curiously, werewolf stories have been sympathetic to the werewolves all along, or at least as early as a lai by Marie de France in the 12th century.)
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ChrisP
said
Vampire legends go WAY back. Bram Stoker about 100 years ago is credited with starting the modern concepts of vampires. In the 80s Anne Rice wrote the Vampire Chronicles, which were wildly popular (but they didn’t appeal to a teen audience as much as Twilight did). The compilation “The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” has been 30 to 45% vampire stories since the series started in the middle 1980s. I’m sure other books were around before then, but as I wasn’t much of a reader until the mid 80s I don’t know about them.
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Hailey 4 Prez
said
yeah i agree Dracula was the start but twilight puts a more modern perspective on things…….i have read the twilight saga (great books) but many people have the Inspiration of other things.
my vampire book is a romantic COMEDY wich makes all the difference!
hope this answered your qouestion!
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Danny
said
Why has nobody brought up “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the cult show from the 1990s? She fell in love with two vampires on that show, Angel (dark, brooding, like Edward Cullen except infinitely more intelligent and realistic) and Spike (a sort of “punk-rock” vampire who is very vicious and brutal). “Buffy” had real vampires. “Twilight” has vampires which are complete bastardizations of vampire mythology.
Not to be a nerd or an elitist, but it’s true. Vampires were all relatively the same until “Twilight,” and then there was “True Blood” and all that other tripe.
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Z
said
Bram Stroker’s book “Dracula” was the first book about vampires (in which I don’t think were called that) and the first book of vampire romance. However, the romance was based on the vampire thinking his dead wife was reincarnated. Not sure exactly how it ended but I’m pretty sure Dracula dies.
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?
said
Actually, first of all, Anne Rice’s first book portraying vampires as sympathetic characters would have been “Interview with the Vampire.”
Vampire romance is a huge genre; Maggie Shayne is my absolute favorite. I recommend her to anyone who likes vampire romance. Christopher Pike’s “Thirst” is a good vampire novel as well. Although it is written like a bad action movie, he borrows so much from mythology and uses a lot of history to explain his vampires that it makes it a good read.
I liked the Twilight Saga as stories. But they weren’t very well written. But the biggest problem I have with people criticizing the books is when people say that they are not “real” vampires or that she perverted vampires.
First off, when most people think of vampires they think of undead creatures that have fangs, shun sunlight and crucifixes or holy water, hate garlic, and die from a stake through the heart. When, in fact, most of these are completely untrue if you look into the mythology or legends of vampires.
Bram Stoker came up with all “modern” concepts of vampires that are now used in film and books. However, if anyone actually took the time to read “Dracula” they would see that Stoker never says that the Count burns in sunlight – his powers are diminished, he doesn’t burst into flames. That concept belongs to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau when he directed “Nosferatu.” And the whole crosses and holy water dribble was made up to identify vampires as satanic or evil creatures who fear God.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was actually a possible concoction of three different vampires. One being the Chiang-Shih of China because this vampire is the only one in legend that shapeshifts, does not show up in a mirror, and hates running water and garlic. Another is the Strigoi of Romania that appears human – however, this vampire is not affected by crosses and even can go to church during the day and raise a family and after a while becomes completely human again. The other vampire legend that it is believed that Bram Stoker borrowed from is the Dearg-dul of Ireland (Stoker’s homeland) that is a vampiric faerie that acts a muse to artists and poets in exchange for their lives. She also appears to be completely human and can go out in the sunlight.
Although, I will admit, none of them sparkle. I really didn’t like that in Twilight. It would have been better if she just had her vampires not have any reaction to sunlight. It would have fit into mythology more. But, to each their own.
There is also the popular opinion that vampires are all dead that have risen again. This, again, is false – depending on the legend. Some vampires are actually dead. However, these (in mythology) appear as decaying corpses and are not the beautiful creatures Hollywood would like us to believe. Actually, the more beautiful vampires are usually just humans that became supernatural creatures or have always been supernatural creatures – these are considered “Living Vampires” because they did not have to die and come back to become a vampire. Some don’t even drink blood but instead live off of “life essence” or spread plagues.
I get a little miffed when someone says that all vampires have to be one way or another because there are so many different variations that appear throughout history (legend or created by novelists or film directors) that you cannot stereotype vampires to all be the walking dead that sleep in coffins, burn in the sun, and run from Christian holy items.
If you are going to lecture on vampires or write about vampires, become familiar with mythology first. Read “The Vampire Slayer’s Field Guide to the Undead” by Shane MacDougall – it is very informative and may save you face among people who have actually studied vampire legends from around the world. If you are going to blame anyone for ruining vampires, blame Hollywood or Buffy the Vampire Hunter series that apparently all under-educated people take as the vampire bible.
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augie6_1
said
Forbidden love forms the basis of many famous tales, including Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Arthurian legend’s Guinevere and Lancelot, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, and even Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Similarly, we’ve repeatedly seen tales of women falling in love and “taming” beastly or monstrous men. The most obvious example is the fairy tale of “Beauty and the Beast,” but elements of this story line also appear in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, among others. For one reason or another, these types of plots allure us as readers, and Twilight taps into these time-honored motifs.
From Shmoop
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Voldemort
said
No, it did not start the entire vampire-romance thing.
Vampire-romance has been around much longer than Twilight -years upon years- and if I had to say which was first I would think it’d be Dracula. Heck “Vampire Diaries” is older than Twilight, and so are most vampire-romances that you find at a book store.
Twilight was just a vampire-romance that came out and became a best-seller and started a craze; it wasn’t the first ever vampire-romance.
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Alexandria Darcy
said
Absolutely not! Vampire romance was around LONG before the atrocity that is Twilight ever entered the scene. I don’t even consider it a true vampire story – I mean, come on, they GLITTER. What IS that? It might be the first one to have grabbed the attention of the young, impressionable teenage masses, but the whole thing makes my brain hurt. And yes, I have read all 4 of them, and I DO know what I’m talking about.