Vampire

Origins

Vampire legends exist in almost every known culture across the world, from Al Gul of Arabia (from which we derive the word ghoul) to the Slavic Obyri, to the Hungarian Vampir, to the Brahmaparush of India, to the vampiric demons of Japan, or Babylonia, of the Hebrews, and the Americas.

Vampires in Popular Culture

In English, there is a recent arc that flows from Lord Ruthven, through Varney the Vampire, through Carmilla, to Dracula and beyond, much of which uses the figure of the vampire as a punishment for females who succumb to sexual seduction.

• The Vampyre, by John William Polidori was published in 1819 as a gothic romance. Interestingly, it originated among the literary friends of Lord Byron, on the same holiday session which produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus.
• Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood, by James Malcolm Rymer (Thomas Preskett Prest), was published in 1845
• Carmilla, A Vampyre Tale, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was published in 1872 as an archetypical lesbian vampire story of that period.
• Dracula, by Bram Stoker, was published in 1897 containing several themes, the sexual punishment of "loose" women, the threat of 'foreign' cultural values supplanting 'proper' British rectitude

Before these came the mother of all modern vampire romance, Dark Shadows, the TV series cum book series spinoff from the 60's. A vampire soap opera starring the undying Barnabas Collins and a cast of tens, returning as reincarnations of themselves in different eras...

The Mystery of Collinwood

          by Marilyn Ross (1968)

etc......

and long preceded by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, A Vampyre Tale (1872) (reprinted in 2000) in which Carmilla is delicately revealed to be a lesbian with the power to cloud women's minds... (The shock! The horror!)

Bram Stoker's female vampires in Dracula are directly descended from Carmilla, although they seem there to be bisexual. Even Dracula is portrayed as a thinly-veiled sexual seducer of women, and the history of semi-orgasmic reactions to his penetrating bite on the part of his female victims is very long indeed.

St.Germaine first appeared in 1978, long after Barabas had loved and lost and gone into reruns, eventually to DVD.

Not to mention the incredible and tragicaly hip Sonja Blue series:

Sunglasses After Dark (1989) In the Blood Paint it Black Dead Roses for a Blue lady Darkest Heart

and Karen Marie Christa Minns' Virago (1990), a lesbian vampire story.

Embracing the Dark (1990) Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Stories ( 1993) followed by: Dark Angels: Lesbian Vampire Stories Vampires & Violets: Lesbians in Film

     by Andrea Weiss (1993)

Anita Blake is a later incarnation of Sonja Blue, who took names and kicked butt, as the saying goes, just like Anita and her countless avatars.

Guilty Pleasures (1993) etc........

And then there was Meredith Ann Pierce's YA Darkangel series:

The Darkangel (1992) A Gathering of Gargoyles The Pearl of the Soul of the World

Love in Vein: Twenty Original Tales of Vampiric Erotica by Poppy Z. Brite (1994)

and a series of erotic vampire short stories from the Nineties, including Hottest Blood (1996)

Carmilla: The Return by Kyle Martin (1998)

Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995)

> Also discussed Tanya Huff's series --

Blood Pact
Blood Debt
Blood Lines
Blood Price
Blood Trail

and last, but not least, 
The Last Days of Christ the Vampire
by J.G. Eccarius (1998)