The Vampyre Library: Tony Thorne’s Children of the Night

✨🩸🗝️You might find yourself wondering, “What does the Keeper of the Library read in her downtime?”🗝️🩸✨

This month’s read is Tony Thorne’s ‘Children of the Night’. Published in 1999, this book is an academic look into the Vampire in fiction, folklore and subculture. While its coverage of the VC is brief, it can be tough to find books that include anecdotal accounts and interviews with community members from the 90s and earlier, so this is a neat read. I only have three or four books in the library that predate this one.

📚From the Publisher: A century after Bram Stoker made the vampire one of the most potent images in all of literature, the cult of the undead is as alive as ever. Not only on celluloid and in the pages of fiction, but from the S&M clubs of New York City to Midwest high schools, the creature walks among us. In Children of the Night, Tony Thorne provides a riveting account of the history, meaning, and resonance of the vampire. This rich and enthralling work draws from a wealth of sources, including European folklore, current research in Eastern Europe, and exclusive interviews with contemporary living vampires—the very latest incarnations of a phenomenon that will not die.

📚About the Author: Tony Thorn is a writer and broadcaster specializing in underground culture, cultural icons and hidden histories. He is a department head at King’s College, University of London, and has travelled extensively in Eastern Europe in pursuit of his researches into local folklore and myth, and in the USA, where he frequently lectures. His books include ‘The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang’ and ‘Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess’.