Book Review: The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers

The Vampire in Europe (reprinted by Dover as The Vampire in Lore and Legend) is Montague Summers's 1929 follow-up to The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. While the latter work has a broad range of subjects - including what vampires are, how to kill them, and an extensive history of vampire fiction - The Vampire in Europe concentrates on vampire legends in ancient Greece and Rome, England and Ireland, modern Greece, and Eastern Europe.

It is important to realize, before reading his works, that Summers is not merely interested in the vampire as a legend. "That a large number of cases of vampirism must be accounted certain only the most prejudiced will deny," he writes in his introduction. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England and shortly thereafter converted to Catholicism and began writing about the occult from a Catholic (if unorthodox) perspective. In addition to The Vampire: His Kith and Kin and The Vampire in Europe, he published two books on witchcraft, as well as the first English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum (1928), and The Werewolf (1933, republished by Dover as The Werewolf in Lore and Legend). He believed that such creatures were the work of the devil and strongly advocated the reinstatement of the death penalty for witches.

The Vampire in Europe is meticulously researched, including hundreds of footnotes and quoted passages (most given without English translations, which is downright frustrating for a reader not familiar with Latin, German, Italian, and several versions of Greek). Despite this fact (or perhaps because of it), the book often reads like the ravings of a mad professor. Summers includes unsubstantiated anecdotes, long passages of translation, and even an entire chapter of Varney the Vampire, whenever it seems to occur to him and not in any sort of organized fashion. He rambles from one example to another until the reader loses track of the subject, with some material so off-topic that it seems suited for entirely different chapters, and ends abruptly without much of an attempt to tie the disparate legends together.

Still, if one can manage to plod through the more awkward parts of Summers's writing style, The Vampire in Europe is an abundant resource for those interested in the Occult, European folklore, or the history of vampire legends. Lovers of vampire fiction should read this book, as well as The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (especially the last chapter, "The Vampire in Literature"), to learn about the vampire legend before he became the star of the paranormal romances flooding the market today-and writers, to pick up ideas for how to make your vampires stand out from the crowd. (Did you know, for example, that according to some Eastern European legends a human can protect themselves by tossing a hawthorn branch or spilling grain, which the vampire will be compelled to pick up and thus forget his prey?) One need not believe it all true, as did Montague Summers, in order to find The Vampire in Europe a fascinating study of folklore.