Vampires and Vampirism

by Montague Summers

Any investigation into vampire legends leads inevitably to the works of Montague Summers (1880–1948), whose research and writings in the 1920s established him as the subject’s preeminent authority. This study examines vampire lore in fantastic detail, constituting a record of folk beliefs unequaled in its sheer scope and depth. It features all the apparatus of an academic work, including footnotes and references to rare source documents, and it addresses such issues as how vampires came into existence, vampirish behavior, vampire-like ancient myths, and vampires in modern literature.

Genres: Vampires, History, Horror, Nonfiction, Occult, Folklore, Mythology

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 1928

About the author

Augustus Montague Summers was an Anglican priest and later convert to Roman Catholicism known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the notorious 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.

Reviews

[Eishexe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh Montague, you crack me up! This man was such a loony, and that just makes his 'scholarly works' that much more entertaining to read. He pursues his chosen subject (the occult) with a slavering religious fervor that just tickles me to death! No matter whether it's this book about vampirism, or his other books on either witches (diabolism) or the werewolf, his theme remains the same: they were created by Satan to lead the devout into damnation!
The real kicker, what REALLY makes these books so much fun, is that he believes EVERYTHING that he's putting down on paper. Great books on folklore written by a hilarious fundie!

[Genevra Littlejohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. I'd probably have loved it more if I could read Latin and Greek--but even what's in English is informative and fascinating.
(I enjoyed the discussion of how Catholic saints resemble vampires in most particulars--not something I'd considered before.)

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in an epic one-day research session for an essay. I'm a very slow reader but I still managed to finish it (okay, I skipped the chapter on Assyrian vampires etc), so I guess that's a testament to how engaging it is. Summers was obviously bonkers, chased into strong religious and superstitious belief by hell knows what, probably the fact that he was a massive gayist. He gathers an astounding amount of folklore, myths, religious legends and stories into one book, all with the exciting twist that he actually uses them to prove that vampires really do/did exist. Sometimes he goes off on long, completely unnecessary tangents which sort of make you forget about the point, but don't you love uselesss information? Dozens of stories about premature burial? I do.

[Pedro Nobre · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we can get through much digression, there's a lot to be learned about how the myth of the Vampire evolved and was standardized very quickly in the 20th century. The book itself was published in the late 20s, but it covers a wide scope of legends surrounding the Vampire that vividly contrast with what's taken for granted today: we learn of how the were-wolf, witches, and vampires myths were intertwined and sometimes even interchangeable in different regions of Europe and Asia. We learn of how witches that didn't face the stake would sometimes crawl back as Vampires, and we learn of how suicides that weren't buried at a crossroads (So their living corpse would stay trapped not knowing where to go) could return as Vampires that drained life forces without biting their victims at all.

Most importantly, we learn that the current depiction of the Vampire, with its sharp teeth, thirst for blood, fierce rejection of sunlight, and ability of commanding and infecting the ones he bites, is an image consolidated from Moravian (And Eastern-European, in general) folklore. Elsewhere there were Vampires who didn't drink blood but devoured their victims whole like were-wolfs, that were intangible like ghosts, that weren't hurt by sunlight, that didn't sleep in coffins, and could be killed with silver bullets. I could go on and on.

Summers seems incapable of avoiding to craft long lists of past and naïve ghost reports, and he dedicates an entire chapter solely to literary works based on the Vampire myth, which has scant use now. You might skip a few pages, and be annoyed by the author's lack of organization, since he keeps delivering solid, useful information mixed with tell-tales and even discussions about Spiritism. Also, if you're read in Anthropology, some wonderings in the book can seem quite amateurish and stereotypical. Summers couldn't control his passion for the Esoteric in general, so he writes in every direction. But it's well worth the patience if you, like me, aren't exclusively interested in the Vampire, and would like to know about other topics Summers was fond of.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

America is seriously infested with vampires -- at least in print and on screen. A search of our library catalogue for "vampire" comes up with almost five hundred titles, and literally every day I add at least one new vampire book, if not a whole series. We have Amish vampires to Viking vampires and everything in between. So it was somewhat interesting for the Halloween challenge to read about vampire lore before Buffy, Sookie and Bella.

According to the introduction, Montague Summers was a "colorful" and "mysterious" figure; he may or may not have been, as he claimed, a Roman Catholic priest; he was an expert on Restoration drama, who edited standard editions of writers like Aphra Behn and Thomas Shadwell; but today he is best known for his books on Demons, Witches, Werewolves, and of course, Vampires -- all of which he believed in. The Vampire was the first of two complementary books -- I'm reading the second book now, The Vampire in Lore and Legend (reprint of The Vampire in Europe; I don't know why Dover changed the titles on these) -- which form a pseudo-scholarly treatment of the vampire legend from antiquity to the beginnings of the twentieth century.

The show of scholarship is superficially impressive. The books are full of long quotations from obscure sources, mostly in Latin, Greek and French, and mostly untranslated -- I think it would be difficult to follow the books at all without a fair reading knowledge of at least Latin. There are pages of small print notes after every chapter. However, the use of the sources is rather peculiar. Many of them have little if any relationship to vampires; he treats as "folklore" or tradition many works which are obviously literary, from Roman poetry to the Arabian Nights. He uses sources from different periods and even different cultures to "fill in" the details. Of course he can do this, because he considers them to be describing the same "real" phenomena.

As a work of nonfiction, I can't rate this one very highly. Of course, I'm not a believer, so his theological arguments don't convince me. But as a collection of interesting material about cultural beliefs which for some reason have become a fad in today's popular culture, it is worthwhile reading.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting research on vampirism but it tends to lean a bit too much on the religious side. I mean, I did expect some of that with the author's background and all but, damn, apparently you have to read a whole bunch of Saints' stories and all about exorcisms before understanding saints are holy people and not evil vampires. Other big, big downside to this book would be the long untranslated quotations in French, German, Greek and Latin. I sorted my way through French and Latin but, well, there was no way for me to figure out Ancient Greek.
I wanted to know more about ancient vampire lore so it served its purpose but I think that if that wasn't the case I would have been very bored with so much religious content.

[Mocha Pennington · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book does give some interesting information, however, it's written so scholarly that even the interesting information and stories seem boring. What fascinated me the most about this book is that the author, Montague Summers, actually believed that vampires were real. This man may have had a few screws loose. The first half of the book was a struggle to get through; I admit, I skipped a few pages here and there to get to something that wouldn't put me to sleep. Anyone who is interesting in the myth and lore of vampires, I do suggest reading Vampires: The Occult Truth by Konstantinos. The book has the same information as Summers' without the pages being leaden with bland, scholarly prose.

[Judy Nappa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a rabid reader of most books vampiric, I came across this book and decided to give it a read. Originally published in 1929, this is a study of vampire stories and beliefs around the world. Montague Summers has covered pretty much all bases in the vampire field. I particularly enjoyed the introduction to the author by Felix Morrow as it shed some light on the person who wrote this book (quite passionate, to say the least). Summers writes almost fanatically about this subject -- very seriously for sure. I'm quite curious as well now to read his other books on witches, demons and the like.

[Karl Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of an endeavor to read this, hardly say it was worth it. Despite the incredible amount of legends, folk tails and stories he cited. His tendency to write in Latin often threw the whole narrative out of sink.

His interpretation was rather enjoyable in parts though, and how he connected each folk tail, many many folk tails, together to create the argument that vampires are a real phenomenon, was very admirable. If only in that he wrote it with such zeal.

Not a horrible read, but I wouldn't recommend for casual reading.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most thorough history of the vampire I have ever read. This guy goes back to the dawn of time and traces the vampire through Eastern Europe and its incarnation as a literary figure. Here we have folklore and history combining. Here we have how a cautionary tale about not skimping on burial rights to avoid a revenant evolving into a literary trope about staying chaste. If you want to the history of one of the world's most famous monsters, read this.

[Grimread · Rating 3 out of 5]

The biggest trouble I had with this edition of the book was my lack of understanding foreign languages. It is true that I can speak (and read) many languages but French, Latin and Greek just aren't in my repertoire. So it would be an immense help if somebody included the translation of all non-english text that were mostly citations from elsewhere instead of me having to read the book while sitting at the computer and having to resort to use google translate.

[Robert Ingram · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would have been easier if it were not in 4 different languages.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting general study of the vampiric myth, but Summers is not as clever or as good a writer as he thinks he is.

[renee c shaner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed reference book

The book is extremely detailed and you learn details of all things vampire. Awesome read .Would be great to have Halloween

[Billie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a tough read, even when compared to Summers' werewolf book. There are fewer passages in untranslated Greek and Latin, but there are also fewer stories of supposed real-life vampire attacks to hold your interest. Instead, we have FIFTY pages of musings on the nature of excommunications in the Catholic church. Granted, that section was there to make a point about vampires, but it could have used some heavy editing.

I did get a kick out of the final page, when Summers casually mentioned the latest play adaptation of Dracula, starring some guy named Bela Lugoni(sp). The book was published three years before the release of the legendary film!

[M. Slinger-Carreer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is DENSE. I could only read about 5 pages at a time before I had to put it down.
The author went to great lengths in gathering documents and materials to compile this book so I will certainly give him credit there. It was extremely repetitive. He would give an observation or a common thread to stories about vampires and then proceed to give about 20 different stories to prove his point. A good third of this book is in latin and french and not translated. I think he "translated" maybe 2 passages but he just briefly explains what it said. Which I guess is better than nothing. But again, he did it less than a handful of times.

[Danny R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bastante denso de leer, pero totalmente vale la pena.

Vampirismo desde su origen, con casos, comparaciones y demaces. Vampiros en el mundo y la literatura. Al leerlo muchas cosas que son de "cultura general" en cuanto al tema hacen sentido o tienen explicación.

Tiene hartos pasajes en otros idiomas (francés, alemán, griego y latín) que hacen que leerlo sea toda una aventura y un poco un quebradero de cabeza, aunque uno del que no me arrepiento para nada :3

[Patrice Voss · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I have always been fascinated by the vampire mythology, this book proved the be a rather dry read.  Even if the author is clearly one of the preeminent authorities on the subject, the book is written much more like a doctoral thesis than a novel, making it difficult to find engaging. 

[Irina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nu am citit aceasta carte ci "micul vampir",însă nu am găsit sa o votez, așa ca am pus una random cu vampiri

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Montague Summers‘ first book on Vampires, and as much as I love the author, I have to admit that this was a rather dry read. I actually started this book to make sure that I would understand references that I might have encountered in another book I’ve been reading; Varney the Vampyre. As it turns out, that book is referenced in this book, but it contains very few references to vampire lore...

Full review here