Customer Reviews

The Vampire, His Kith and Kin

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This is the textbook of vampirism and, is about as entertaining as any college textbook would be. It is the first of several books on the subject written by Montague Summers. It was written in the days before the Hollywood vampire and, reads like an Audubon Society field guide to birds. If you are looking for the definitive non-fiction work on the subject, you have found it. If you are looking for "Vampire: The Masquerade" type kitsch, you're in over your head here.

In this work Summers discusses the vampire phenomena from a relentless Catholic perspective; he believes in the literal reality of vampires! This is not a hoax. This book has all of the apparatus to qualify as an academic study, including footnotes, extensive quotations in the original languages, and references to rare source documents. Of particular interest is the final chapter, which traces the development of the vampire craze in 19th century literature

I was preparing to write a book with vampire characters, so I downloaded "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" in order to do some research. The author of this book is all in! The work is written at the level of an academic thesis. He details the vampire mythology as seen in many cultures, including the ancient Sumerians and ancient Hebrews. He recounts stories that date from ancient times all the way up to the modern.
He discusses the attitude of the 18th Century Church toward vampires, vampire scares in Europe, and vampires in literature. Another commenter says that Summers believed in the reality of vampires. I'm not certain that is true. He does relate the accounts of vampirism dispassionately, without expressing either belief or open skepticism.
If you are interested in a comprehensively scholarly study of vampire mythology, "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin," is a first place to look. The down side is that if you're not looking for a scholarly look, you should probably give this book a pass. It has two difficulties: It was written in 1928, and the writing style reflects the era. And, Summers has a disconcerting habit of breaking into page after page of foreign language text. So, unless you are multilingual, you have to let a great deal of information go by.
The two problems that I see...foreign language exposition and dated writing style...can be overlooked. I'm giving this one five stars, because the book does what it set out to do.
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