The Living Dead • James B Twitchell • 1987, Paperback

 A very rare edition of this book, with the purple cover. The Living Dead, A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature by James B Twitchell. Perfect for all the serious vampirologists and geeks of horror literature.

In his Preface to The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature, James Twitchell writes that he is not interested in the current generation of vampires, which he finds "rude, boring and hopelessly adolescent. However, they have not always been this way. In fact, a century ago they were often quite sophisticated, used by artists varied as Blake, Poe, Coleridge, the Brontes, Shelley, and Keats, to explain aspects of interpersonal relations. However vulgar the vampire has since become, it is important to remember that along with the Frankenstein monster, the vampire is one of the major mythic figures bequeathed to us by the English Romantics. Simply in terms of cultural influence and currency, the vampire is far more important than any other nineteenth-century archetypes; in fact, he is probably the most enduring and prolific mythic figure we have. This book traces the vampire out of folklore into serious art until he stabilizes early in this century into the character we all too easily recognize.

• A used secondhand vintage paperback. 
• Published by Duke University, 1987.
• Condition is very good - very minor bumped corners, dusty edges. The top right corner of cover mildy creased. No spine creasing.
  
• Pages 219.