Le Vampire (March to April 1831), a short-lived journal dedicated to exposing the vices of gambling houses, the lottery and the stock market from the beginnings of the July Monarchy, uses the image of the vampire as financial predator and beguiling Proteus to personify the ills of all three financial activities as they were understood at this time. In this article the two authors contextualize the journal by attempting to ascertain the identity of its probable editor, Abbé Grégoire, the contemporary cultural and literary attitudes to gambling which the journal embodies, the different rhetorical strategies the journal uses in describing and addressing the personified vampire, and finally analyzing the ways in which the “vampire” symbolizes predatory financial activity. It is argued that the portrayal of the vampire is not in keeping with the vampire as capitalist as described by Marx, representing a distinct era of economic development.

Read Le Vampire (1831): a rediscovered journal of the July Monarchy