Before Bella and Edward, Stefan and Damon Salvatore, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, there was Lestat and Louis, The Lost Boys and Buffy Summers. Before True Blood and Let the Right One In, there was Dark Shadows and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Then there is the most prominent vampire of them all: Dracula, immortalized by Bram Stoker in 1897. Whether they're evil, bloodsucking monsters or sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight, vampires have been capturing our imagination since their modest beginnings in the rustic fantasies of southeast Europe in the early eighteenth century. Today, they're everywhere, even appearing in Japanese and Korean films and in reggae music in Jamaica. Why have vampires gone viral in recent years? In The Rise of the Vampire, Erik Butler seeks to explain our enduring fascination with the creatures of the night.