Tremayne, Peter
Tremayne, Peter (1943–)
(pop culture)Peter Tremayne is the pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis when writing horror, fantasy, and science fiction works. His first fictional book as Peter Tremayne, The Hound of Frankenstein, was one of two books he completed in 1977. The second, Dracula Unborn (released in the U.S. as Bloodright: Memoirs of Mircea, Son of Dracula) was the first of his Dracula series. Heavily influenced by the writings on Vlad the Impaler by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, Tremayne wrote his novel as the long-lost “Memoirs of Mircea, Son of Dracula.” Mircea, who had been born in, but raised outside of, Romania, returned to discover his vampiric heritage and meet his father.
The second vampire novel, The Revenge of Dracula, followed a year later. Again, Tremayne employed the device of the discovery of formerly lost memoirs. This volume told the story of a nineteenth-century Englishman who discovered a jade dragon statuette. Afterward, he had a number of strange dreams, including one about a Dracula figure. He traveled to Transylvania and upon his return had to be committed to an insane asylum. Tremayne’s last novel, Dracula My Love (1980), was built around the memoirs of Morag, a Scottish governess who moved to Castle Dracula and fell in love with the Count, the first person she encountered who treated her with a sense of dignity. This final novel departed from the first two novels in that Dracula was portrayed very positively and sympathetically. Thus, for his last vampire novel, Tremayne participated in the trend to create a vampire hero initiated by Fred Saberhagen and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Ellis continues to write, producing several books annually. He last returned to the Dracula theme in a nonfiction book with coauthor Peter Haining, The Undead, published in 1997.
Sources: