Even the Grateful Dead has it in their discography. There is an excellent reading found on YouTube, as well. In keeping with the Scottish ballad, I chose Northumberland as the place for Wickham’s home where he is buried because of its proximity to Scotland and because of its numerous border wars. Luckily, Newcastle, where Darcy sends Wickham in the Austen original, is in Northumberland.

In merging the two diverse genres, one must remember that vampire literature springs from early Gothic tales, which ironically peppered the literature of Jane Austen’s time. Typically in early vampire stories, a respectable and virtuous woman rejects a man’s love.The woman is under the influence of a tyrannical and powerful male from whom the “hero” must save her, and that “hero” possesses a highly developed intelligence and exceptional charisma and charm. A “seduction” of sorts occurs. Are those elements not also present in each of Austen’s pieces? After all,Austen herself parodies the Gothic novel in Northanger Abbey, even mocking Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. She uses the stereotypes of the abbey, the mysterious murder, and the evil seducer, yet Austen

I teach English and have done so for more years than I care to count, and so I am familiar with many of the original literary works dealing with vampires. For example, nearly eighty years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula became the standard by which vampire stories are judged, Lord Byron’s life and legend inspired Polidori’s The Vampyre, and even Stoker quoted Gottfried August Bürger’s narrative poem “Lenore” (1773). Samuel Coleridge’s poem “Christabel” also influenced much of the vampire literature that followed.

Yet unlike many modern readers of vampire stories, I realize that some elements of vampire tales come from modern visual media rather than legend or folklore. While doing research for Vampire Darcy’s Desire, I looked more at the types of vampires, ways to kill a vampire, and general characteristics of vampires.Although I learned tidbits about the Twilight series from my female students, I purposely did not read the book, nor did I see the film.