Disability, Illness, and the Vampire in Literature and Culture

Drumlin N.M. Crape and Brooke Cameron’s Disability, Illness, and the Vampire in Literature and Culture is an edited collection of essays addressing a wide range of literary depictions of vampirism and disability, from early and formative Victorian vampire stories like Eric Stenbock’s ‘The True Story of a Vampire’ (1894) and Dion Boucicault’s The Vampire (1852) to contemporary depictions across media forms, including the novels that comprise Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles (1976–2018), television shows like The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017) and Midnight Mass (2021), and recent video games like V Rising (2022).

In addition to this breadth of vampires and vampire stories included, this collection emphasizes a broad and multifaceted understanding of disability that is critical of the historical and ongoing ways that ableism and rigid ideas about normalcy have linked monsters like vampires to disabled people.

By critically examining the way disability is presented in vampire stories, the work of this collection’s contributors speaks to evolving ideas of who counts as human—and of what, exactly, the figure of the vampire has to teach us about our own humanity.