I caved

I wrote, 'Despite the exorbitant price, I'll probably bite the bullet and buy 'em anyway.' And I did. On October 12th. Shipping cost €7,50. The issues arrived in the post, today.

Academia.edu

I'm looking forward to reading Eugenio M. Olivares Merino's two-parter, 'The (Medi)evil dead: revenants and vampires in twelfth century English literature', in particular. 

He has a thing for this era, as he also wrote 'The Old English poem "A vampyre of the Fens": a bibliographical ghost' (pdf) for Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 32 (2005).

'A vampyre of the Fens' is a poem supposedly written 'a the beginning of the eleventh century', which not only makes it the world's oldest vampire poem, but features the first reference to 'vampyres', anywhere. However, as Olivares Merino's essay attests, someone done goofed along the way.

Olivares Merino is a Professor of English at the Universidad de Jaén.

Fastitocalon

Fastitocalon

I've uncovered an intriguing publication called Fastitocalon, which 'aims at promoting a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of fantasticism across the ages.' Its first volume—divided into issues 1 and 2—'is dedicated to the exploration of the literary, poetical, cultural and historical aspects of the immortals and the undead.'

Of particular note, for vampiric content, is Dirk Vanderbeke's 'The vampire strikes back: on the history of a nightwalker' and Eugenio Olivares Merino's two-parter, 'The (Medi)evil dead: revenants and vampires in twelfth century English literature.' The site feature's Mythlore's review of the volume (pdf).¹

Whether you think these articles justify the €15,00 price tag per volume (I don't), is up to you. Nonetheless, you can buy issues one and two through the journal's publisher, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Despite the exorbitant price, I'll probably bite the bullet and buy 'em anyway.

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^{1. JB Croft, review of Fastitocalon: studies in fantasticism ancient to modern: immortals and the undead (eds.) Thomas Honneger & Fanfan Chen, Mytholore, vol. 29, no. 12, 2010, pp. 188–92.↩}

Vampire journal purchases

While researching my my post on vampire journals, I sought out pricing for some available on the 'net. I found a couple of 'em on eBay and snapped 'em both up for US$9 each on September 28, after getting the seller to knock 'em down from 12 bucks a pop. They arrived in the post, yesterday.

They were both issues of Vampire Information Exchange's Vampire Information Exchange Newsletter; issues 75 (July 1996) and 77 (February 1997), respectively. I'm not sure if the newsletter's still published, but I do know it started in 1979.

That duration's an impressive feat, in itself, for a vampire periodical. In contrast, Martin V. Riccardo's Journal of Vampirism—official publication of his Vampire Studies Society—folded after two years (1977–79).

The issue numbers, however, are pretty daunting from a collecting perspective. Not only is the newsletter comparatively rare, but I only have a few others. The idea of collecting all of them, is a bit of a nightmare. 

Issue 75 (above) focuses on 'Female vampires in literature'. The primary articles in this category are Louise Ann Stephens' 'Madeline Montalia matures' (pp. 16–17), Karen Porter's 'Ancient sources for the literary female vampire' (pp. 17–18) and Feleccia Rea's 'The nature of the beast: the female vampire' (pp. 18–24).

Issue 77 (left) tackled psychic vampirism, and to that extent, there was a brief 'Glossary of terms' (p. 13), a discussion of 'The Old Hag theory' (pp. 14–15), presumably by Eric Held,  and two familiar 'faces' returned. Karen S. Porter wrote about 'Psychic aspects in traditional vampirism' (pp. 16–17), while Louise Ann Stephens took 'A not-so-brief look at psychic vampirism' (pp. 17–22). 

I'm not aware of any vampire books written by Porter and Stephens, so I hopped on Google to track 'em down. I couldn't find anything solid on Stephens, but I did find out that Porter's a poet. At the time (1997), she was 'engaged in the unromantic job of helping to run her family's liquor store.'