There’s no contesting it: we live in the heyday of the vampire.  From Anne Rice’s sexy, brooding Louis in Interview with the Vampire to Stephenie Meyer’s sexy, brooding Edward in Twilight, the reading public has been bombarded for the last thirty years with the un-dead in every incarnation and permutation imaginable. We’ve seen vampire villains, vampire heroes, vampire anti-heroes, vampire slayers, vampire world-conquerors, vampires in ancient China, fat Southern vampires, teen vampires, child vampires, vampire superheroes, and, in at least one instance, a vampire Pomeranian. Big screen Hollywood extravaganzas continue to hover into view in local multiplexes, and vampire-themed romance and science fiction novels roll off the presses every month in a seemingly unending supply.

So it seems only fitting to doff our caps today to the man who started it all (and no, we’re not talking about poor wretched Doctor Polidori, who can continue to rest in peace). Today is the birthday of Bram Stoker, the Irish-born (in 1847) journalist, critic, and theater manager who in 1897 gave the world Dracula. “Time is on my side” the fiendish Count says at one point in that novel (which is far more entertaining than you might recall and well worth a celebratory re-read), and it certainly has been: ‘Dracula’ as a literary icon has entered the pantheon of instantly-recognizable figures such as Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan. A new hardcover edition of Dracula is in bookstores now (as well as its very first Stoker family-authorized sequel!), a vampire series is the hit of HBO, and a new Dracula movie is in the works – and we owe it all to Stoker, who had the stroke of genius to bring these creatures of musty old folklore into the light of the present day and set them loose on modern science.

By one of those hair-raising coincidences that so bedevil the literary world, this is also the birth-date of Vlad Tepes, the big-nosed and utterly ruthless Romanian warlord known to history as “the Impaler.” But at Open Letters we’re peaceful folk, so we’re going to let him rest in peace too.

Stephanie Meyer’s ludicrously popular Twilight series (over 40 million copies sold) has prompted Joan Acocella of the New Yorker to go back to the origins of vampire myth, on to it’s spread throughout Europe in the seventeenth century, to a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva in the early nineteenth century.

In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron, fleeing marital difficulties, was holed up in a villa on Lake Geneva. With him was his personal physician, John Polidori, and nearby, in another house, his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley; Shelley’s mistress, Mary Godwin; and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, who was angling for Byron’s attention (with reason: she was pregnant by him). The weather that summer was cold and rainy. The friends spent hours in Byron’s drawing room, talking. One night, they read one another ghost stories, which were very popular at the time, and Byron suggested that they all write ghost stories of their own. Shelley and Clairmont produced nothing. Byron began a story and then laid it aside. But the remaining members of the summer party went to their desks and created the two most enduring figures of the modern horror genre. Mary Godwin, eighteen years old, began her novel “Frankenstein” (1818), and John Polidori, apparently following a sketch that Byron had written for his abandoned story, wrote “The Vampyre: A Tale” (1819).

Polidori’s book was a huge success, and wasn’t topped for nearly eighty years, when Bram Stoker, a theater manager who wrote thrillers on the side, published Dracula. Acocella guides us through the movies, television shows and books that lead us to the present day, where “enthusiasm for vampires seems to be at a new peak.” Be sure to check out our October 2008 issue, where Sharon Fulton explains:

• The House Bunny movies

Sometimes when I’m tearing into a rare steak or re-watching Fight Club, I understand why everybody wants a little bloodlust from their paramours. And even if you’re a vegan saint, vampire fiction provides a nice, safe release from the least kinky parts of your day….Not only are contemporary authors churning out vampire tales as if they actually believe there’s no tomorrow and someone’s coming to drain them dry, but publishers have started reprinting deluxe editions of older classics.

Her Vampire Fan(g) Guide covers over a dozen of the latest releases, including Meyer’s all-conquering tetralogy.