What do you think?
Rate this book
The Vampire in Lore and Legend
"Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet [looked upon] with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both."
So begins this riveting study by one of the foremost authorities on witchcraft and occult phenomena. An indefatigable researcher, Summers explores the presence of vampires in Greek and Roman lore, in England and Ireland during Anglo-Saxon times, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, even in modern Greece. More than just a collection of library lore, however, this detailed examination of the history of vampirism in Europe also includes anecdotes and firsthand accounts gathered by the author from peasants in places where belief in vampires was still common.
A fascinating, sometimes terrifying book, The Vampire in Lore and Legend is a "mine of out-of-the-way information full of unspeakable tales," writes The New York Times; and according to Outlook, "a fascinating inquiry into the vampire legend . . . a storehouse of curious and interesting lore." Of great interest to any enthusiast of the supernatural and the occult, this book will appeal as well to the legions of general readers captivated by this ancient myth.
So begins this riveting study by one of the foremost authorities on witchcraft and occult phenomena. An indefatigable researcher, Summers explores the presence of vampires in Greek and Roman lore, in England and Ireland during Anglo-Saxon times, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, even in modern Greece. More than just a collection of library lore, however, this detailed examination of the history of vampirism in Europe also includes anecdotes and firsthand accounts gathered by the author from peasants in places where belief in vampires was still common.
A fascinating, sometimes terrifying book, The Vampire in Lore and Legend is a "mine of out-of-the-way information full of unspeakable tales," writes The New York Times; and according to Outlook, "a fascinating inquiry into the vampire legend . . . a storehouse of curious and interesting lore." Of great interest to any enthusiast of the supernatural and the occult, this book will appeal as well to the legions of general readers captivated by this ancient myth.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1929
9 people are currently reading
488 people want to read
About the author
Montague Summers
182 books105 followersAugustus 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 2, 2019
Well, this rather silly book prompted me to meditate on some pretty heavy and unexpected things.
While I'm not sure exactly why, I thought of it languishing on my shelves and picked it up because I was somehow vaguely prompted by my concurrent reading of the last of J. K. Huysmans Durtal novels. This proved to be more than apt as apparently Summers and Huysman share that fin-de-siecle Catholic mystic fetishism and, indeed, Summers cited the first of Huysman's Durtal novels, La-Bas, at least three times in his "study" with a reverence bordering on awe.
First of all, allow me to go out on a limb here and openly declare myself a "materialist" or "skeptic" or any of the other scoffing and dismissive words that both authors use for those of us who are simply too rational to accept the reality of vampirism, the existence of a powerful Satan ever at work re-animating corpses with a thirst for living blood to annoy and confuse humankind, or indeed even a benevolent God who would somehow allow Satan to carry on with such shenanigans merely to add a soul or two here and there to his eternal realm of punishment and damnation. Indeed such childish opinions on the part of otherwise intelligent and even learned human beings, as Freud once remarked, "embarrasses me for our species."
This was my first interesting meditation prompted by this silly pseudo-scholarly "study" of an occult belief that's been so useful to fiction writers over the course of the last two centuries. How the hell do otherwise reasonable people come to believe in the fantasies of we writers of fiction? What are they thinking?
Along with that thought followed an obviously related wonderment in the face of those who, in the name of the good that they glean from religion--and here I can only really speak for my own Christian culture although it could easily be expanded, I imagine, to many other religions--so quickly fall into the overwhelming need to find the binary bad that logically follows in the wake of a belief in some sort of cosmic good out there drawing us toward it. How do the preachings of a moral Jesus on how to love our fellow human beings so quickly degenerate into a witch hunt and a strong morally prompted quest to scapegoat, murder, and destroy other sectors of our motley species in the name of love?
No matter how many times I observe the process--from Anti-semitism to Holy wars to witch burnings--my mind remains rather boggled by this terrifyingly absurd use of logic.
The only way I could enjoy this book at all, therefore, was to re-frame it in my mind as a kind of novel in the form of a character study. The protagonist (the fictional author of this so-called study of vampires and vampirism) is a probably repressed homosexual so terrified of his own nonconformist differences branded "evils" by the church to which he is determined to join and lose himself in so as to re-insert himself into a comfortable new conformity that he must collect all of the stories of this heinous phenomenon, rail against the witches, heretics, and demoniacs who enable its continuance, and sign it as a kind of membership card in his own imagined confraternity of in-the-know Catholics.
Framed this way, this is a chilling novel of horror: the horror of scholarship as a genocidal gesture. The moral of the story being that only a disinterested anthropology will save us from ourselves, our complicity with power through numbers and mass hysteria, and our self-destructive desires in order to gain the approval of one comforting institution or other. Yes, Racists, Fascists, revolutionaries, terrorists, soldiers, religionists, et al.--I'm looking at you.
While I'm not sure exactly why, I thought of it languishing on my shelves and picked it up because I was somehow vaguely prompted by my concurrent reading of the last of J. K. Huysmans Durtal novels. This proved to be more than apt as apparently Summers and Huysman share that fin-de-siecle Catholic mystic fetishism and, indeed, Summers cited the first of Huysman's Durtal novels, La-Bas, at least three times in his "study" with a reverence bordering on awe.
First of all, allow me to go out on a limb here and openly declare myself a "materialist" or "skeptic" or any of the other scoffing and dismissive words that both authors use for those of us who are simply too rational to accept the reality of vampirism, the existence of a powerful Satan ever at work re-animating corpses with a thirst for living blood to annoy and confuse humankind, or indeed even a benevolent God who would somehow allow Satan to carry on with such shenanigans merely to add a soul or two here and there to his eternal realm of punishment and damnation. Indeed such childish opinions on the part of otherwise intelligent and even learned human beings, as Freud once remarked, "embarrasses me for our species."
This was my first interesting meditation prompted by this silly pseudo-scholarly "study" of an occult belief that's been so useful to fiction writers over the course of the last two centuries. How the hell do otherwise reasonable people come to believe in the fantasies of we writers of fiction? What are they thinking?
Along with that thought followed an obviously related wonderment in the face of those who, in the name of the good that they glean from religion--and here I can only really speak for my own Christian culture although it could easily be expanded, I imagine, to many other religions--so quickly fall into the overwhelming need to find the binary bad that logically follows in the wake of a belief in some sort of cosmic good out there drawing us toward it. How do the preachings of a moral Jesus on how to love our fellow human beings so quickly degenerate into a witch hunt and a strong morally prompted quest to scapegoat, murder, and destroy other sectors of our motley species in the name of love?
No matter how many times I observe the process--from Anti-semitism to Holy wars to witch burnings--my mind remains rather boggled by this terrifyingly absurd use of logic.
The only way I could enjoy this book at all, therefore, was to re-frame it in my mind as a kind of novel in the form of a character study. The protagonist (the fictional author of this so-called study of vampires and vampirism) is a probably repressed homosexual so terrified of his own nonconformist differences branded "evils" by the church to which he is determined to join and lose himself in so as to re-insert himself into a comfortable new conformity that he must collect all of the stories of this heinous phenomenon, rail against the witches, heretics, and demoniacs who enable its continuance, and sign it as a kind of membership card in his own imagined confraternity of in-the-know Catholics.
Framed this way, this is a chilling novel of horror: the horror of scholarship as a genocidal gesture. The moral of the story being that only a disinterested anthropology will save us from ourselves, our complicity with power through numbers and mass hysteria, and our self-destructive desires in order to gain the approval of one comforting institution or other. Yes, Racists, Fascists, revolutionaries, terrorists, soldiers, religionists, et al.--I'm looking at you.
July 30, 2011
The title is self-explanatory. Summers might have been a demented weirdo with an unhealthy attraction to the morbid, but he hit the nail on the head when he wrote this one. It’s the best guide to male/female relationships ever written.
Yeah, that remark will probably have me sleeping on the couch for the next ten years, but seriously, folks: TVIL&L is one of the best books ever written on vampires.
If you’re the kind who plays live-action role-playing games (or attends DragonCon wearing mommy’s makeup and Lord Byron’s castoffs), you’ll probably want to avoid this one. If, on the other hand, you’re truly interested in folklore and mythology, you’ll love it.
Beginning at the dawn of Western civilization, Summers traces the bloodsuckers’ development from Classical Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the early twentieth century.
Summers was a prodigiously educated man, and his occult studies (while marred in parts by his strident – if unorthodox -- brand of Roman Catholicism) are actually quite scholarly. Unfortunately, he expects the same of his readers -- the book’s main weakness. Whether through laziness or pomposity (by 1928, a classical education was hardly the norm, even in Britain), Summers peppers the book with lengthy, un-translated passages in Greek, Latin, Middle and Modern French, and Middle High German.
The Latin, French and German weren’t serious problems for me, but I don’t read Classical Greek and neither, I imagine, do many modern readers. Therefore, I suspect Summers of putting on airs for a very simple reason: there are no long, un-translated passages in Hungarian (a Uralic tongue with which I have a nodding acquaintance) or any of the Slavic languages, even though he treats with vampire legends from Hungary, the Balkans and Russia. This suggests that Summers didn’t speak any of the aforementioned, and did himself a courtesy he denies the reader: that of providing an English translation. The fact that he translated Kraemer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum and Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum in their entirety reinforces my suspicion of laziness and/or pretentiousness on his part.
This failing aside, it’s a very good book – one of the best on the subject.
Stripping the vampire of its post-Stoker glamour (which has since been compounded by Hollywood), Summers portrays the vampire as he appears in myth and legend – an object of true horror. His theological arguments in favor of the actual existence of vampires are also interesting – if a tad eccentric. If you’re interested in the real vampire (the dreaded vlkodlak that kept Balkan peasants sleepless, clutching talismans and muttering prayers), this is your book.
Yeah, that remark will probably have me sleeping on the couch for the next ten years, but seriously, folks: TVIL&L is one of the best books ever written on vampires.
If you’re the kind who plays live-action role-playing games (or attends DragonCon wearing mommy’s makeup and Lord Byron’s castoffs), you’ll probably want to avoid this one. If, on the other hand, you’re truly interested in folklore and mythology, you’ll love it.
Beginning at the dawn of Western civilization, Summers traces the bloodsuckers’ development from Classical Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the early twentieth century.
Summers was a prodigiously educated man, and his occult studies (while marred in parts by his strident – if unorthodox -- brand of Roman Catholicism) are actually quite scholarly. Unfortunately, he expects the same of his readers -- the book’s main weakness. Whether through laziness or pomposity (by 1928, a classical education was hardly the norm, even in Britain), Summers peppers the book with lengthy, un-translated passages in Greek, Latin, Middle and Modern French, and Middle High German.
The Latin, French and German weren’t serious problems for me, but I don’t read Classical Greek and neither, I imagine, do many modern readers. Therefore, I suspect Summers of putting on airs for a very simple reason: there are no long, un-translated passages in Hungarian (a Uralic tongue with which I have a nodding acquaintance) or any of the Slavic languages, even though he treats with vampire legends from Hungary, the Balkans and Russia. This suggests that Summers didn’t speak any of the aforementioned, and did himself a courtesy he denies the reader: that of providing an English translation. The fact that he translated Kraemer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum and Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum in their entirety reinforces my suspicion of laziness and/or pretentiousness on his part.
This failing aside, it’s a very good book – one of the best on the subject.
Stripping the vampire of its post-Stoker glamour (which has since been compounded by Hollywood), Summers portrays the vampire as he appears in myth and legend – an object of true horror. His theological arguments in favor of the actual existence of vampires are also interesting – if a tad eccentric. If you’re interested in the real vampire (the dreaded vlkodlak that kept Balkan peasants sleepless, clutching talismans and muttering prayers), this is your book.
December 16, 2008
Reading Montague Summers is a real treat. Only can the great Monty start a tale about a Cobbler from Istanbul then segue into descriptions of dandyisim in shoes only to return to the story of the cobbler which ends in a necrophiliac encounter that begets a disembodies head they turns the cobbler's (Who in the mean time has become a pirate) enemies to stone.
Fascinating details concerning style and machanics of shoe construction.
Monty roxx.
Fascinating details concerning style and machanics of shoe construction.
Monty roxx.
Currently reading
March 16, 2018I've finished the first section, on ancient Greece and Rome, and will come back to book when I have more time.
May 28, 2020
Summers, a member of the church, has amassed a collection of primary and secondary accounts interspersed with his own opinions and connections. The book is very interesting from an anthropological standpoint, as it's easy to see the connections between varied cultural beliefs. I would recommend that you read the section on England/western Europe AFTER reading about modern Greece and the Slavic countries, because this section is comparatively weak and might discourage from reading further.
Read
December 30, 2025read for my vampire class did not care for it
December 13, 2023
Montagu Summers is not an easy author to evaluate. On the one hand, he seems to have collected a treasure trove of supernatural folklore and tales from many countries. On the other, there is his stated belief in the reality of many of these stories. "Eccentric" is a mild description of this man and his works. Reader's reactions will no doubt vary when it comes to his anachronistic writing style, idiosyncratic take on Catholic theology, and tendency to drop whole pages of Latin, Greek, French, or German quotations. It all just adds to the mystery of whether Montagu Summers was just a bit over the top or totally off the rails.
This book of primarily European lore is better than his other vampire book (Vampires and Vampirism), mainly because he is working within a related group of traditions and does not feel compelled to somehow shape very different mythical creatures into a single "real version". As in his other works, Summers does have a tendency to wander onto tangents, such as accounts of ghosts, demotic possession, the logic of different burial practices, or even discussions of literature. The book is best when it simply recounts stories of vampiric outbreaks or when it quotes at length older works on the subject.
This book of primarily European lore is better than his other vampire book (Vampires and Vampirism), mainly because he is working within a related group of traditions and does not feel compelled to somehow shape very different mythical creatures into a single "real version". As in his other works, Summers does have a tendency to wander onto tangents, such as accounts of ghosts, demotic possession, the logic of different burial practices, or even discussions of literature. The book is best when it simply recounts stories of vampiric outbreaks or when it quotes at length older works on the subject.
February 4, 2015
Montague Summers,
The Vampire in Lore and Legend
[reprint of The Vampire in Europe, 1929] 329 pages
The companion book to The Vampire: His Kith and Kin = Vampires and Vampirism. I won't repeat what I've already said in the review of that book. This book concentrates more on Europe, especially Eastern Europe (Greece, Russia, Roumania, Bulgaria). The quotations in this one are mostly translated. There is a good deal of repetition of stories from the first book.
The companion book to The Vampire: His Kith and Kin = Vampires and Vampirism. I won't repeat what I've already said in the review of that book. This book concentrates more on Europe, especially Eastern Europe (Greece, Russia, Roumania, Bulgaria). The quotations in this one are mostly translated. There is a good deal of repetition of stories from the first book.
August 15, 2016
Blargh... this would have been so much better if the author had taken into account that not everyone interested in horror folklore knows every imaginable language out there. Oh well... maybe there will be a better translation some day.
December 22, 2016
More of the same in this one as with his book in the vampire, except he does more with the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews