"vampire" from 1688?

Bonnie Taylor-Blake taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM
Mon May 28 18:08:41 UTC 2007


Joel Berson wrote:

> In "The Vampire: A Casebook" (ed. Alan Dundes, 1998), page 6,
> Katharina M. Wilson quotes Charles Forman using the word "vampire"
> "metaphorically" in his "Observations on the Revolution in
> 1688".  She claims that this work was written in "the same year",
> presumably meaning 1688, and was published in 1741.  If she is
> correct about the date it was written, this figurative use antedates
> OED2 by 46 years, and would indicate knowledge of and literal use of
> the word earlier.


That 1741 printing of Forman's _Some Queries and Observations on the
Revolution in 1688 . . ._ is, believe it or not, the second edition.  I've
no idea what became of the first edition.

Anyway, I've temporarily uploaded a JPG of the 1741 frontispiece here (note
that Forman is deceased by the time of this printing),

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/Forman1.jpg

Forman, however, was writing from Paris in January, 1733 (see "Forman2,"
below).  The first three pages of the chapter in which "Vampires of the
Publick" appears can be found for a while at

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/Forman2.jpg
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/Forman3.jpg
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l275/BonnieTB/Forman4.jpg

("Vampires of the Publick" is to be found in the footnote at the bottom of
p. 11, "Forman4.")

Please let me know if you're interested in seeing more of this book.

-- Bonnie

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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