Author notes

Chapter 4 Page 3

Artificer Urza

on Feb. 23, 2009

Supposedly vampire folklore originates outside of Romania; prior to the Crusades those stories came with nomads traveling into Romania from the North and Northeast. Once in Romania, these tales thrived and became folklore. There are creatures with similar characteristics out in the world, the Alp for instance, but the vampire is rather unique. The stories made their way into Britain, but they were only really prevalent in the early 1700's inciting riots and disturbances as fear of vampires erupted. The first piece of vampire literature that I remember hearing about is John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (published in 1819); Polidori is thought to be the father of romantic vampire literature. Next is Bram Stoker's Dracula (published in 1897) which brought the vampire, Dracula in particular to the attention of the populace. Movies and such abounded in the 20th century, becoming increasingly popular; especially in the past 30 with the advent of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (published 1976) and the creation of The Masquerade series of card games, video game and books, Hellsing (manga and anime), Van Hellsing (movie) and the recent culmination of Twilight.