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Bite
Arm yourself with garlic, stake and crucifix, for the vampires are back in force - at the top of the best seller lists, on your TV, on the web and lurking in darkened cinemas. But where did they come from? Why have they come back now? And how can you tell if you are one?
Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, Bite follows the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. Alongside mini-essays, anecdotes, facts and figures, each section will be punctuated with lists, such as the best places around the world for vamp tourism; rock songs with vampire allusions; box-office revenue for vamp movies; the top 10 vampire clubs, video games and vampire brides, as well as reliable and unreliable methods of killing a vampire....
Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, Bite follows the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. Alongside mini-essays, anecdotes, facts and figures, each section will be punctuated with lists, such as the best places around the world for vamp tourism; rock songs with vampire allusions; box-office revenue for vamp movies; the top 10 vampire clubs, video games and vampire brides, as well as reliable and unreliable methods of killing a vampire....
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First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Kevin Jackson
106 books17 followersThere is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire but instead he became the last living polymath. His colossal expertise ranged from Seneca to Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food, Dante's Inferno and the moose. He was the author of numerous books on numerous subjects, including Fast: Feasting on the Streets of London (Portobello 2006), and reviewed regularly for the Sunday Times.
From: http://portobellobooks.com/3014/Kevin...
Kevin Jackson was an English writer, broadcaster and filmmaker.
He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After teaching in the English Department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, he joined the BBC, first as a producer in radio and then as a director of short documentaries for television. In 1987 he was recruited to the Arts pages of The Independent. He was a freelance writer from the early 1990s and was a regular contributor to BBC radio discussion programmes.
Jackson often collaborated on projects in various media: with, among others, the film-maker Kevin Macdonald, with the cartoonist Hunt Emerson, with the musician and composer Colin Minchin (with whom he wrote lyrics for the rock opera Bite); and with the songwriter Peter Blegvad.
Jackson appears, under his own name, as a semi-fictional character in Iain Sinclair's account of a pedestrian journey around the M25, London Orbital.
Adapted from Wikipedia
Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire but instead he became the last living polymath. His colossal expertise ranged from Seneca to Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food, Dante's Inferno and the moose. He was the author of numerous books on numerous subjects, including Fast: Feasting on the Streets of London (Portobello 2006), and reviewed regularly for the Sunday Times.
From: http://portobellobooks.com/3014/Kevin...
Kevin Jackson was an English writer, broadcaster and filmmaker.
He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After teaching in the English Department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, he joined the BBC, first as a producer in radio and then as a director of short documentaries for television. In 1987 he was recruited to the Arts pages of The Independent. He was a freelance writer from the early 1990s and was a regular contributor to BBC radio discussion programmes.
Jackson often collaborated on projects in various media: with, among others, the film-maker Kevin Macdonald, with the cartoonist Hunt Emerson, with the musician and composer Colin Minchin (with whom he wrote lyrics for the rock opera Bite); and with the songwriter Peter Blegvad.
Jackson appears, under his own name, as a semi-fictional character in Iain Sinclair's account of a pedestrian journey around the M25, London Orbital.
Adapted from Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 2, 2012
I love vampire lore and I’d like to recommend warmly Bite: a Vampire Handbook by Kevin Jackson, published by Portobello Books, but I can’t: it’s too rushed, too breathless. Though well enough written Bite carries a certain infelicity of style, due in part, one suspects, from a hurried publication to catch a past holiday market. There is far too much parenthesis and a number of annoying typos.
Still, it did tell me some things, some aspects of vampire tradition that I did not know, and might serve as an introductory guide to those coming to the subject for the first time. But for those with some insight it is little better than an hors d'ouevres.
Kevin Jackson, the author, grew up wanting to be a vampire (don’t we all!). Instead he became the next best thing - a film critic. :-) Bite combines both of these ambitions, as it spends as much time trawling through vampire movies, in a rather geekishly obsessive fashion, I have to say. I personally could have done with far less of this and far more of the lore.
The lore is good, that I am happy to admit. I did not know, for example, that German vampires are said to clutch one of their thumbs while in their coffins; that they can be killed not by wooden stakes but by the simple expedient of placing an apple in their mouths! Similarly I did not know that there was a vampire chair in Wales which was reputed to bite anyone who sat on it. Bulgarian vampires must be the easiest to recognise because - sans opera cloak - they had only one nostril and emitted sparks at night. Yes, I could have done with a lot more of this and a lot less comment on the ins and outs of Dracula movies.
Although Lord Byron and his friend John Polidori might be said to have given shape to the modern vampire myth it was Bram Stoker’s publication of Dracula in 1897 that marks the most significant step. Jackson is quite right in claiming that this novel is to vampires what The Origin of Species is to evolution. However he misses one small but important point in describing the book’s reception at the time.
The late nineteenth century saw growing concern in England over immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, and particularly by Russian Jews. In 1904, Howard Vincent, the MP for Sheffield Central, wrote "While 260,000 people emigrated from the United Kingdom last year, their places were taken by no less than 82,000 of the scum of Europe."
Arnold White, a leading eugenicist and racial theorist, considered most of the new arrivals in London to be 'diseased and destitute, a threat to British workers' While admitting that the Russian excesses had been 'regrettable', he said that this was based on a recognition by Russian statesmen that their country was threatened by a Jewish takeover. White was an influential figure, whose views of the Jews as diseased-ridden criminals, on the one hand, and exploitative international financiers, on the other, were widely disseminated. He included none other than Lord Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Party and three-time Prime Minister, among his correspondents.
It was Salisbury, while in opposition, who introduced a Bill in the House of Lords, calling for the expulsion of aliens, who 'threatened the peace and tranquillity of the realm.' Destitute aliens, like those coming to the East-End, were also to be kept out.
In 1900, during the Khaki election, the anti-immigration East London Observer noted "Surely for Londoners, the election should have one object and that above all party politics. I refer to the presence in their midst of these foreign Jews." The cause was taken up by William Evans-Gordon, soldier, author and Member of Parliament. He co-operated closely with the British Brothers League in having a Royal Commission on immigration set, to which he was appointed chairman. It was as a result of this agitation that the Aliens Act 1905 was finally passed, though, in the event, it was far less restrictive than Evans-Gordon and his supporters would have liked.
So, it was against this general background that Dracula made its appearance, carrying themes of pollution by blood and disease, carried to England from Eastern Europe, giving it a particular relevance for the debates of the day.
Anyway, if you want a 'bite' at this fascinating subject by all means have a look at Bite.
Still, it did tell me some things, some aspects of vampire tradition that I did not know, and might serve as an introductory guide to those coming to the subject for the first time. But for those with some insight it is little better than an hors d'ouevres.
Kevin Jackson, the author, grew up wanting to be a vampire (don’t we all!). Instead he became the next best thing - a film critic. :-) Bite combines both of these ambitions, as it spends as much time trawling through vampire movies, in a rather geekishly obsessive fashion, I have to say. I personally could have done with far less of this and far more of the lore.
The lore is good, that I am happy to admit. I did not know, for example, that German vampires are said to clutch one of their thumbs while in their coffins; that they can be killed not by wooden stakes but by the simple expedient of placing an apple in their mouths! Similarly I did not know that there was a vampire chair in Wales which was reputed to bite anyone who sat on it. Bulgarian vampires must be the easiest to recognise because - sans opera cloak - they had only one nostril and emitted sparks at night. Yes, I could have done with a lot more of this and a lot less comment on the ins and outs of Dracula movies.
Although Lord Byron and his friend John Polidori might be said to have given shape to the modern vampire myth it was Bram Stoker’s publication of Dracula in 1897 that marks the most significant step. Jackson is quite right in claiming that this novel is to vampires what The Origin of Species is to evolution. However he misses one small but important point in describing the book’s reception at the time.
The late nineteenth century saw growing concern in England over immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, and particularly by Russian Jews. In 1904, Howard Vincent, the MP for Sheffield Central, wrote "While 260,000 people emigrated from the United Kingdom last year, their places were taken by no less than 82,000 of the scum of Europe."
Arnold White, a leading eugenicist and racial theorist, considered most of the new arrivals in London to be 'diseased and destitute, a threat to British workers' While admitting that the Russian excesses had been 'regrettable', he said that this was based on a recognition by Russian statesmen that their country was threatened by a Jewish takeover. White was an influential figure, whose views of the Jews as diseased-ridden criminals, on the one hand, and exploitative international financiers, on the other, were widely disseminated. He included none other than Lord Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Party and three-time Prime Minister, among his correspondents.
It was Salisbury, while in opposition, who introduced a Bill in the House of Lords, calling for the expulsion of aliens, who 'threatened the peace and tranquillity of the realm.' Destitute aliens, like those coming to the East-End, were also to be kept out.
In 1900, during the Khaki election, the anti-immigration East London Observer noted "Surely for Londoners, the election should have one object and that above all party politics. I refer to the presence in their midst of these foreign Jews." The cause was taken up by William Evans-Gordon, soldier, author and Member of Parliament. He co-operated closely with the British Brothers League in having a Royal Commission on immigration set, to which he was appointed chairman. It was as a result of this agitation that the Aliens Act 1905 was finally passed, though, in the event, it was far less restrictive than Evans-Gordon and his supporters would have liked.
So, it was against this general background that Dracula made its appearance, carrying themes of pollution by blood and disease, carried to England from Eastern Europe, giving it a particular relevance for the debates of the day.
Anyway, if you want a 'bite' at this fascinating subject by all means have a look at Bite.
April 27, 2011
Mother dearest purchased this in an effort to tell me "It's okay that you read about dead things, I'm not freaked out by that."
December 12, 2023
Nonostante la copertina trash, è un saggio che vuole ripercorrere le varie fasi di fama del vampiro nelle arti. Il problema è che spesso diventava una lista lunga e noiosa di titoli o di semplici trame. Il concetto dietro è intrigante, ma lo svolgimento lascia a desiderare.
January 13, 2018
Prima lettura del nuovo anno, un saggio assolutamente interessante sulla nascita della figura del vampiro mi sono segnata un sacco di libri e film a tema che devo assolutamente guardare.
April 28, 2022
Bite provides an introduction to vampire lore, as well as a brief overview of a selection of the most important and/or influential vampire fiction in books, movies, and television. The book is an interesting little foray into vampire mythology, but I personally found the coverage to be a little unevenly distributed and sometimes rather flimsy. I would have liked a little more context and depth to the part of the book dealing with vampire mythology, and I think that less introductory-style books might be better suited to someone with a serious fascination with vampires such as myself. I would, however, recommend the book for people who enjoy vampire stories and would like a brief introduction to the myths that inspired their favourite fictional characters.
September 16, 2021
Picking up this book I thought it more a how to on vampire lore, but it’s essentially a book reviewing all other vampire books, movies and t.v of note (to the author)
Going into the book I thought it would explain where certain areas of the vampire mythology came from, and it did to a point.
I’d say the first one and a half chapters were about the myth of the vampire and the rest was about... movies.
Not what I signed up for. Blurb is misleading.
3/5 stars because the first few chapters were interesting and I learned some stuff.
Going into the book I thought it would explain where certain areas of the vampire mythology came from, and it did to a point.
I’d say the first one and a half chapters were about the myth of the vampire and the rest was about... movies.
Not what I signed up for. Blurb is misleading.
3/5 stars because the first few chapters were interesting and I learned some stuff.
May 11, 2024
This one is about the vampire, lore and gore, its epidemics, what the word means, Romantic and Victorian vampires, Stoker, the real Dracula's England, the haunted screen with Murnau's Nosferatu, other Draculas, Hammer films and Christopher Lee, the ladies and the vamp, From Dusk Till Dawn, the best of vampire television, further developments and the shape of fangs to come. Missed photos, movie still and other graphics here but overall and entertaining read that revealed some facts I didn't read so far. Really recommended!
February 14, 2022
Het boek is in het engels geschreven waardoor het traag leest het is een informatief boek voor de cultuur/ films/ boeken over vampieren
January 26, 2014
Vampires are and have been for a long time a source of fear, a mythical creature of the night that has spawn many legends and stories. A complete run down of their history, legends, stories, influences, ect would no doubt take a very long time and the book would be thick and heavy. BITE however is not a thick or heavy book, but it does include a lot about vampire history and lore, and just enough to satisfy those of us who are interested in the subject.
Read more - http://supermarcey.com/2014/01/20/boo...
Read more - http://supermarcey.com/2014/01/20/boo...
April 21, 2012
An ok read but needed a bit more depth. I thought that the early history was covered in sufficient depth but the more modern was skimmed over slightly. It would have been nice for more detail on later works. It seemed like the author was running out of steam and rushing to finish. Unless, of course, the assumption was that more detail wasn't needed on the later works as we are already more familiar with them?
June 28, 2011
Kevin Jackson’s childhood dream was to become a vampire. Instead, he wrote a handbook on everything he knows about them.
From Dracula to Buffy to Bella, he tells us everything about being a vampire. He writes about the undead and their progress through the ages. He includes what they eat, where to find them, how to recognise them and how to kill them.
Only recommended for real Vampire fans.
From Dracula to Buffy to Bella, he tells us everything about being a vampire. He writes about the undead and their progress through the ages. He includes what they eat, where to find them, how to recognise them and how to kill them.
Only recommended for real Vampire fans.
April 7, 2010
Written with the dry assurance and comical wit of one who knows something about everything, Bite is a slim compendium of vampire lore and entertainment. If it takes one to know one, you'd have to wonder if Jackson isn't a vampire himself. A truly fan(g)tastic and enjoyable read!
July 17, 2010
A guide to vampires, full of stories, facts, list and trivia. Everything you need to know about the creatures of the night. The book itself was ok and it had a lot of information that was interesting but I've read the same thing in countless other books so there was nothing really new to me.
January 10, 2010
a good if not a little breif history of the development of the vampire in myth, literatue, film and the arts.
June 14, 2011
A very insightful book.
Also came in real handy as a reference for my Gothic Literature essay.
Also came in real handy as a reference for my Gothic Literature essay.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews