The idea of vampires did not begin with Dracula. The idea had been around since the Middle Ages if not longer. Vlad the Impaler and the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory are two of the most famous exampales. There were vampire stories before Dracula (1897) such as John Polidori's story, "The Vampyre" (1819). It was Bram Stoker who set the standard with his bestselling novel, Dracula. Movies like Tod Browning's Dracula showed a monstrous hunter who lived off the human prey's blood, did not go out during the daylight, slept in a coffin, and shrunk when confronted with a Cross.
With Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire (1976), the sub-genre changed and evolved. In her novel, the reader is taken into the world of a vampire family. The vampire is no longer just a hunter but a sympathetic creature. With Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, the image of a vampire changes again. There were now romantic vampire novels and films. The vampire story changes again with the Underworld film series. The series becomes a quest for Vampire and Werewolf origins. This quest continues with Deborah Harkness' The Discovery of Witches (2011) and her All-Souls Trilogy.
Another kind of vampire is the emotional vampire, such as the mother featured in D.H. Lawrence's story, "The Lovely Lady".
"There are far worse things awaiting man than death."--Dracula to Mina Seward in the 1931 film, Dracula.
The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead by In 1976, Anne Rice published her debut novel, Interview with a Vampire, "Her novel, aided by the scores of vampire novels it inspired, helped to transform the vampire into a sympathetic individual marginalized by society" (Cardin, p.114). "Ultimately, Rice offered a new model of the soulful vampire that continues to haunt contemporary literature and media" (Cardin, p.696).
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