Reviews

The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John Polidori

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strabbyfieldz's review

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

some of these stories actually did make me feel a physical impact of shock or just sadness after reading them, and some of these stories were My Hobby- Rather in which a cat tries to eat a corpse and that's it. That's the story. OoOoOoOoo(?)

Content Warnings

rkessel's review

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obviously some of the stories were better than other but i only truly disliked a few of them. my favorites were the title story, Monos and Daimonos, The Victim, and Life in Death.

schomj's review against another edition

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2.0

Well, I can finally say that I've read Polidori's The Vampyre. So there's that.

The thing I particularly enjoy about classic Gothics is how they use the melodrama and horror and menace to subtly critique dominant social norms. Alas, this tale seemed to be more interested in reifying them.

I continued on to the next story in the volume and, again, the use of horror served the purpose of reinforcing dominant moral views without critiquing dominant power structures. Meh.

This anthology is not my cuppa. Onward to something else.

bmatzke's review

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4.0

Really fun collection of 19th century gothic stories. The title story is, of course, a classic, and this provides a good scholarly edition of that, complete with source materials and useful footnotes. But the other stories in the collection are also really fun, and give a good sense of the connections between the print culture of gothic fiction and the later print culture of pulp fiction.

caitlinejones's review against another edition

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5.0

This is such a fascinating read, particularly after reading Dracula- Aubrey and Johnathan have quite a lot in common. It is more 18th century Gothic than the later vampire novels, which I like a lot. Small beginnings for a big genre.

katiedreads's review

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adventurous dark slow-paced

3.5

I purchased this mainly for Polidori's The Vampyre and that was a 4 star for me. It doesn't have the thriller element seen in later works, but it does have the atmosphere, the psychological torture, and the revenge aspect which I loved. I also enjoyed how you could see the elements in Polidori's works that went on to influence others. I also liked that this had the of travel writing that was similar to Jonathan's diary later seen in Dracula. However, the rest of the stories did not catch my attention with quite a few skim-read or DNF'd the notable expectations were Some Terrible Letters from Scotland by James Hogg and The Bride of Lindorf by Letitia E. Landon which were both interesting.

msgtdameron's review against another edition

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4.0

A whole bunch of great stories of the macabre and murder. If you like gothic stories this one is a winner. Some of these stories need to be read by the writers of Criminal Minds. One story from France has a mode of death for a women that is truly terrible, sadistic, and cruel, but you got to read this one to find out.