Abraham Van Helsing
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. Van Helsing is an aged polymath Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D. Ph. D. Litt. etc.", indicating a wealth of experience and expertise. The character is best known throughout many adaptations of the story as a vampire hunter and the archenemy of Count Dracula. In the novel, Professor Van Helsing is called in by his former student, Dr. John Seward, to assist with the mysterious illness of Lucy Westenra. Van Helsing's friendship with Seward is based in part upon an unknown prior event in which Van Helsing suffered a grievous wound, Seward saved his life by sucking out the gangrene, it is Van Helsing who first realizes that Lucy is the victim of a vampire, he guides Dr. Seward and his friends in their efforts to save Lucy. According to Leonard Wolf's annotations to the novel, Van Helsing had a son. Van Helsing says that his son, had he lived, would have had a similar appearance to Lucy's husband Arthur Holmwood.
Van Helsing developed a particular fondness for Holmwood. Van Helsing's wife went insane after their son's death, but as a Catholic, he refuses to divorce her. Van Helsing is one of the few characters in the novel, physically described in one place. In chapter 14, Mina Harker describes him as: a man of medium height built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck; the poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of power. The head is noble, well-sized and large behind the ears; the face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first straight and sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot tumble over it, but falls back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set apart, are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods.
Van Helsing's personality is described by John Seward, his former student, thus: He is a arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, one of the most advanced scientists of his day, he has, I believe, an open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, indomitable resolution, self-command, toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. In the novel Van Helsing is described as having what is a thick foreign accent, in that he speaks in broken English and he uses German phrases like, "Mein Gott". Adaptations of the novel have tended to play up Van Helsing's role as a vampire expert, sometimes to the extent that it is depicted as his major occupation. In the novel, however, Dr. Seward requests Van Helsing's assistance because Lucy's affliction has him baffled and Van Helsing "knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world", Van Helsing does not determine that a vampire is the cause in time to prevent Lucy's death.
Count Dracula, having acquired ownership of England's Carfax estate through solicitor Jonathan Harker, moved to the estate and began menacing England. His victims included Lucy Westenra, on holiday in Whitby; the aristocratic girl has suitors such as Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, Quincey Morris, has a best friend in Mina Murray, Harker's fiancée. Seward, who worked as a doctor in an insane asylum – where one of the patients, the incurably mad Renfield, has a psychic connection to Dracula – contacts Professor Van Helsing about Lucy's peculiar condition. Van Helsing, recognizing marks upon her neck deduces that she has been losing blood from a vampire bite, he administers multiple blood transfusions, Van Helsing and Arthur each donating blood to her, but each night she continues to lose blood. He prescribes her garlic, makes a necklace of garlic flowers for her and hangs garlic about her room, he gives her a crucifix to wear around her neck. Lucy's demise was brought by her mother who cleared the room of garlic and opened the window for fresh air.
Lucy after the funeral returns as a vampire, seeking out children. Van Helsing, Arthur and Seward free the undead Lucy from her vampiric curse: Arthur uses a hammer to drive the stake through her heart and Van Helsing cuts off her head and puts garlic in her mouth. Mina, now married to Harker, becomes worried about his brain fever. Van Helsing reviews his journal and Harker's health returns when he learns that his experiences in Transylvania were real. Mina discovers that various letters and accounts provide further intelligence on Dracula's movements, shares these with Harker, Seward and Van Helsing, they learn that Dracula's residence in Carfax was near Seward's, Van Helsing's research reveals Dracula's weaknesses and strengths. Seward and Van Helsing write to a university acquaintance to aid in further research. Staying at Seward's residence to better plan strategies in their efforts to deal with Dracula, they have frequent meetings and each member is assigned d
Penny dreadful
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, penny blood; the term referred to a story published in weekly parts, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin and Varney the Vampire; the Guardian described penny dreadfuls as “Britain’s first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young.”While the term "penny dreadful" was used in reference to a specific type of literature circulating in mid-Victorian Britain, it came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries". The penny dreadfuls were aimed at young working class men. More than a million boys’ periodicals were sold a week, but the popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature the half-penny periodicals published by Alfred Harmsworth.
Crime broadsides were sold at public executions in the United Kingdom in the 18th and 19th centuries. These were produced by printers who specialised in them, they were illustrated by a crude picture of the crime, a portrait of the criminal, or a generic woodcut of a hanging taking place. There would be a written account of the crime and of the trial and the criminal's confession of guilt. A doggerel verse warning others to not follow the executed person's example, to avoid their fate, was another common feature. Victorian era Britain experienced social changes. With the rise of capitalism and industrialisation, people began to spend more money on entertainment, contributing to the popularisation of the novel. Improvements in printing resulted in newspapers such as Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Richard Steele's The Tatler, England's more recognizing the singular concept of reading as a form of leisure. Other significant changes included industrialisation and an increased capacity for travel via the invention of tracks and the corresponding railway distribution.
These changes created both a market for cheap popular literature, the ability for it to be circulated on a large scale. The first penny serials were published in the 1830s to meet this demand. Between 1830 and 1850 there were up to 100 publishers of penny-fiction, in addition to many magazines which embraced the genre; the serials were priced to be affordable to working-class readers, were cheaper than the serialised novels of authors such as Charles Dickens, which cost a shilling per part. The stories themselves were reprints, or sometimes rewrites, of the earliest Gothic thrillers such as The Castle of Otranto or The Monk, as well as new stories about famous criminals; some of the most famous of these penny part-stories were The String of Pearls: A Romance, The Mysteries of London, Varney the Vampire. Varney is the tale of the vampire Sir Francis Varney, introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences — it was the first story to refer to sharpened teeth for a vampire.
Highwaymen were popular heroes. Other serials were thinly-disguised plagiarisms of popular contemporary literature; the publisher Edward Lloyd, for instance, published a number of penny serials derived from the works of Charles Dickens entitled Oliver Twiss, Nickelas Nicklebery, Martin Guzzlewit. Working class boys who could not afford a penny a week formed clubs that would share the cost, passing the flimsy booklets from reader to reader. Other enterprising youngsters would collect a number of consecutive parts rent the volume out to friends. In 1866, Boys of England was introduced as a new type of publication, an eight-page magazine that featured serial stories as well as articles and shorts of interest. Numerous competitors followed, with such titles as Boys' Leisure Hour, Boys' Standard, Young Men of Great Britain, etc; as the price and quality of other types of fiction works were the same, these fell under the general definition of penny dreadfuls. Appearing in the 1860s, American dime novels were rewritten for a British audience.
These appeared such as the Boy's First Rate Pocket Library. Frank Reade, Buffalo Bill, Deadwood Dick were all popular with the penny dreadful audience; the penny dreadfuls were influential since they were, in the words of one commentator, "the most alluring and low-priced form of escapist reading available to ordinary youth, until the advent in the early 1890s of future newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth's price-cutting'halfpenny dreadfuller'". In reality, the serial novels were overdramatic and sensational, but harmless. If anything, the penny dreadfuls, although not the most enlightening or inspiring of literary selections, resulted in literate youth in the Industrial period; the wide circulation of this sensationalist literature, contributed to an ever-greater fear of crime in mid-Victorian Britain. The popularity of penny dreadfuls was challenged in the 1890s by the rise of competing literature. Leading the
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. It introduced the character of Count Dracula, established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy; the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel, invasion literature; the novel has spawned numerous theatrical and television interpretations. The story is told in an epistolary format, as a series of letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, ships' log entries, whose narrators are the novel's protagonists, supplemented with newspaper clippings relating events not directly witnessed; the events portrayed in the novel take place chronologically and in England and Transylvania during the 1890s and all transpire within the same year between 3 May and 6 November.
A short note is located at the end of the final chapter written 7 years after the events outlined in the novel. The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, visiting Count Dracula at his castle in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania and Moldavia, to provide legal support for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer, Mr Peter Hawkins of Exeter. At first enticed by Dracula's gracious manners, Harker soon realizes. Wandering the Count's castle against Dracula's admonition, Harker encounters three female vampires, called "the sisters", from whom he is rescued by Dracula. Harker soon realizes that Dracula himself is a vampire. After the preparations are made, Dracula abandons Harker to the sisters. Harker escapes from the castle with his life. Dracula boards a Russian ship, the Demeter, taking along with him boxes of Transylvanian soil, which he required in order to regain his strength. Not long afterward, the ship having weighed anchor at Varna, runs aground on the shores of Whitby in the east coast of England.
The captain's log narrates the gradual disappearance of the entire crew, until the captain alone remained, himself bound to the helm to maintain course. An animal resembling "a large dog" is seen leaping ashore; the ship's cargo is described as 50 boxes of "mould", or earth, from Transylvania. It is learned that Dracula purchased multiple estates under the alias'Count De Ville' throughout London and devised to distribute the 50 boxes to each of them utilizing transportation services as well as moving them himself, he does this to secure for himself "lairs" and the 50 boxes of earth would be used as his graves which would grant safety and rest during times of feeding and replenishing his strength. Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, is staying with her friend Lucy Westenra, holidaying in Whitby. Lucy receives three marriage proposals from Dr. John Seward, Quincey Morris, Arthur Holmwood. Lucy accepts Holmwood's proposal while turning down Seward and Morris. Dracula communicates with Seward's patient, Renfield, an insane man who wishes to consume insects, spiders and rats to absorb their "life force".
Renfield is able to detect Dracula's presence and supplies clues accordingly. Soon Dracula is indirectly shown to be stalking Lucy; as time passes she begins to suffer from episodes of sleepwalking and dementia, as witnessed by Mina. When Lucy begins to waste away suspiciously, Seward invites his old teacher, Abraham Van Helsing, who determines the true cause of Lucy's condition, he diagnoses her with acute blood-loss. Van Helsing prescribes numerous blood transfusions to which he, Seward and Arthur all contribute over time. Van Helsing prescribes garlic flowers to be placed throughout her room and weaves a necklace of withered garlic blossoms for her to wear; however she continues to waste away – appearing to lose blood every night. While both doctors are absent and her mother are attacked by a wolf and Mrs. Westenra, who has a heart condition, dies of fright. Van Helsing attempts to protect her with garlic but fate thwarts him each night, whether Lucy's mother removes the garlic from her room, or Lucy herself does so in her restless sleep.
The doctors have found two small puncture marks about her neck, which Dr. Seward is at a loss to understand. After Lucy dies, Van Helsing places a golden crucifix over her mouth, ostensibly to delay or prevent Lucy's vampiric conversion. Fate conspires against him again when Van Helsing finds the crucifix in the possession of one of the servants who stole it off Lucy's corpse. Following Lucy's death and burial, the newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady". Van Helsing, knowing Lucy has become a vampire, confides in Seward, Lord Godalming, Morris; the suitors and Van Helsing track her down and, after a confrontation with her, stake her heart, behead her, fill her mouth with garlic. Around the same time, Jonathan Harker arrives from Budapest, where Mina marries him after his escape, he and Mina join the campaign against Dracula; the vampire hunters stay at Dr. Seward's residence, holding nightly meetings and providing reports based on each of their various tasks.
Mina discovers that each of their journals and letters collectively contain clues to which they can track him down. She tasks herself with collecting them, researching newspaper clippings, fitting the most relevant entries into chronological order and typing out copies to distribute to each of the party which t
Vampire literature
Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre, inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire; some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first example, in 1976 by Anne Rice in Interview with the Vampire. More the genre has been blended with science fiction motifs like aliens. Moreover, some modern vampires feed on energy, rather than blood. Vampire fiction is rooted in the'vampire craze' of the 1720s and 1730s, which culminated in the somewhat bizarre official exhumations of suspected vampires Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole in Serbia under the Habsburg Monarchy. One of the first works of art to touch upon the subject is the short German poem The Vampire by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, where the theme has strong erotic overtones: a man whose love is rejected by a respectable and pious maiden threatens to pay her a nightly visit, drink her blood by giving her the seductive kiss of the vampire and thus prove to her that his teaching is better than her mother's Christianity.
Furthermore, there have been a number of tales about a dead person returning from the grave to visit his/her beloved or spouse and bring them death in one way or another, the narrative poem Lenore by Gottfried August Bürger being a notable 18th-century example. One of its lines, was to be quoted in Bram Stoker's classic Dracula. A German poem exploring the same subject with a prominent vampiric element was The Bride of Corinth by Goethe, a story about a young woman who returns from the grave to seek her betrothed: From my grave to wander I am forcedStill to seek the God's long sever'd link, Still to love the bridegroom I have lost, And the lifeblood of his heart to drink; the story is turned into an expression of the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity: the family of the dead girl are Christians, while the young man and his relatives are still pagans. It turns out that it was the girl's Christian mother who broke off her engagement and forced her to become a nun driving her to death.
The motive behind the girl's return as a "spectre" is that "e'en Earth can never cool down love". Goethe had been inspired by the story of Philinnion by Phlegon of Tralles, a tale from classical Greece. However, in that tale, the youth is not the girl's betrothed, no religious conflict is present, no actual sucking of blood occurs, the girl's return from the dead is said to be sanctioned by the gods of the Underworld, she relapses into death upon being exposed, the issue is settled by burning her body outside of the city walls and making an apotropaic sacrifice to the deities involved. The first mention of vampires in English literature appears in Robert Southey's monumental oriental epic poem Thalaba the Destroyer, where the main character Thalaba's deceased beloved Oneiza turns into a vampire, although that occurrence is marginal to the story, it has been argued that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Christabel has influenced the development of vampire fiction: the heroine Christabel is seduced by a female supernatural being called Geraldine who tricks her way into her residence and tries to marry her after having assumed the appearance of an old beloved of hers.
The story bears a remarkable resemblance to the overtly vampiric story of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In a passage in his epic poem The Giaour, Lord Byron alludes to the traditional folkloric conception of the vampire as a being damned to suck the blood and destroy the life of its nearest relations: But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent: Then ghostly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. Byron composed an enigmatic fragmentary story, published as "A Fragment" in 1819 as part of the Mazeppa collection, concerning the mysterious fate of an aristocrat named Augustus Darvell whilst journeying in the Orient—as his contribution to the famous ghost story competition at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816, between him, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John William Polidori; this story provided the basis for The Vampyre by Polidori. Byron's own wild life became the model for Polidori's undead protagonist Lord Ruthven.
According to A. Asbjorn Jon'the choice of name is linked to Lady Caroline Lamb's earlier novel Glenarvon, where it was used for a rather ill disguised Byronesque character'. An unauthorized sequel to Polidori's tale by Cyprien Bérard called Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires was attributed to Charles Nodier. Nodier himself adapted "The Vampyre" into the first vampire stage melodrama, Le Vampire. Unlike Polidori's original story Nodier's play was set in Scotland; this in turn was adapted by the English melodramatist James Planché as The Vampire.
Louis de Pointe du Lac
Louis de Pointe du Lac is a fictional character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. He begins his life as a mortal man and becomes a vampire, he is the protagonist. He features in The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Prince Lestat and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis. Louis de Pointe du Lac is born in France on October 4, 1766, to a Roman Catholic family who emigrated to North America when he was young, his mother and brother, live just outside New Orleans on one of their two indigo plantations, named Pointe du Lac after the family. Louis's brother, who insists that he has religious visions, dies after a terrible quarrel with Louis. Louis blames himself for his brother's death, becoming self-destructive and desperate, he lacks the courage to commit suicide. He takes to frequenting taverns and other places of ill repute, instigating fights and duels in order that someone might kill him. During an incident in a tavern, Louis catches the eye of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt.
Lestat appears to Louis as an angel and offers him an alternative to his desperate, meaningless life. Lestat, upon seeing for the first time Louis's "fine black hair" and deep green eyes, sensing his passion, is seduced not only by Louis's beauty, but by his tragedy and human heart. Lestat makes Louis into a vampire at the age of 25, his immortal companion in 1791, lives with Louis for nearly 70 years. However, Lestat is damaged from his experiences in the Old World, he is not as gentle a tutor or as much of a friend as Louis would like, one of the central themes in Interview with the Vampire. An example of this is an anguished comment recalled by Louis in his memoir, where he muses: "I was thinking how sublime friendship between Lestat and me might have been. While Louis and Lestat are at odds with one another, they form an uneasy truce, with Lestat coming to regard Louis as a kind of soulmate, albeit one who resists his "teachings" on killing and living life as a vampire. There is an element of sexual attraction implicit in their relationship.
Interview with the Vampire details an ersatz familial relationship between Louis, Lestat and a third vampire, Claudia. Louis, in a moment of weakness, feeds from a five-year-old orphan he finds in an abandoned house within the plague-ridden section of New Orleans. Lestat contrives to make her into a vampire to, in his own words, "bind Louis to." In giving Louis Claudia to love and look after, he curses Claudia by condemning her to the form of a little girl. Louis accepts his "family", taking the "maternal" role with Claudia and finding contentment in their townhouse at Rue Royale. Claudia however, matures psychologically but remains in her child form. After decades of being trapped in the form of a small child, she comes to hate both of her "parents" for giving her immortality, she rebels against Lestat, poisoning him and setting their home ablaze with Lestat inside in 1860. She escapes with Louis to eastern Europe to look for other vampires. After years of searching and becoming disillusioned, they travel to Paris.
In Paris, they find fifteen vampires who have disguised themselves as human actors pretending to be vampires at the Théâtre des Vampires. However, in the eyes of this coven of vampires and Claudia are criminals; the coven finds out that both attempted to kill their maker Lestat, believe they ought to pay for their crime with their lives since killing fellow vampires is against the rules of the vampiric lifestyle. Louis escapes death after Lestat pleads for his life. Claudia is destroyed. Louis burns down the Théâtre, killing the vampires there as revenge for Claudia's death and drifts through the world with the Theatre's former leader, whom he had fallen in love with, they separate in the 1920s in New Orleans. In the early 1920s, Louis claims to have discovered Lestat in New Orleans, lost in a catatonic state. Louis turns his back on him in disgust. Louis and Lestat are reunited at the end of the novel The Vampire Lestat in 1985 when Lestat is a rock superstar. In the events of The Queen Of The Damned and other vampires come together at Maharet's house in the Sonoma Compound to fight against Akasha.
Louis is one of the only vampires to refuse the powerful blood offered by Maharet and Lestat, preferring to gain strength with age. However at the end of Merrick, one of the Vampire Chronicles, Louis puts himself into the sun after making Merrick a vampire. Lestat, David Talbot, Merrick give Louis some of their blood to save Louis's life, it is noted by David Talbot that with this transfusion of blood Louis may have lost some of his humanity and become more vampiric in nature and has become equal to Lestat in power. In Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Louis leaves Armand and his home at Trinity Gate to reunite with Le
Moonlight (TV series)
Moonlight is an American paranormal romance television drama created by Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, executive producer for all episodes with Joel Silver, Gerard Bocaccio, Gabrielle Stanton and Harry Werksman. The series follows private investigator Mick St. John, turned into a vampire by his bride Coraline on the couple's wedding night fifty-five years earlier. In the present day, he struggles with his attraction to a mortal woman, Beth Turner, his friendship with Josef Kostan, his dealings with other vampires in Los Angeles; the series was commissioned by Warner Bros. Television in 2007 as a presentation lasting 14–20 minutes. Alex O'Loughlin, Shannon Lucio, Rade Šerbedžija and Amber Valletta were cast in the lead roles, Rod Holcomb was hired as director. David Greenwalt joined the staff in May 2007 as executive producer with Joel Silver. All of the original actors, apart from the male lead role, were recast in June 2007, Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon replaced them. With an entirely different cast, a retooled, full-length pilot for television audiences was re-shot.
Moonlight was premiered on September 28, 2007, shown on Friday nights on CBS. Although received poorly by critics, the pilot finished first among total viewers and adults 18–49 for its night; the series received negative reviews, averaged 7.57 million American viewers per episode. Many critics criticized the writing. Moonlight went on hiatus due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, but returned with four new episodes once the strike ended. On May 13, 2008, CBS announced that Moonlight was cancelled. Trevor Munson conceived the character of Mick Angel in 2004 and spent two and a half years writing a novel featuring the character; the story was adapted into a feature film script, Bruce Willis was considered as a possibility for the lead role. The script was shown to Nina Tassler at CBS, who paired Munson with Ron Koslow, creator of Beauty and the Beast, to rewrite the script as a television series; the series was titled Twilight, Koslow and Munson wrote the pilot, which Warner Bros. Television commissioned as a presentation lasting 14–20 minutes in January 2007.
Joel Silver and Gerard Bocaccio were hired to be executive producers on the project under the former's production banner, Silver Pictures, in the same month. Alex O'Loughlin and Shannon Lucio were cast in the presentation, Rod Holcomb was hired as director; the project was renamed Moonlight when picked up by CBS on May 2007, prior the upfronts. David Greenwalt, creator of Miracles and co-creator of Angel, joined the staff in May 2007 as showrunner and executive producer alongside Silver. CBS had hired Greenwalt during the pilot process to restructure the original concept by Koslow and Munson, but health reasons forced Greenwalt to leave the series, Chip Johannessen took over showrunner duties in August 2007. During Greenwalt's restructuring of the pilot, all of the original actors save for the male lead role of Mick St. John were recast in June 2007: Shannon Lucio, Rade Šerbedžija and Amber Valletta were cast in the roles of Beth Turner, Josef Kostan and Coraline Duvall before Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon replaced them.
With an entirely different cast, a retooled, full-length pilot for television audiences was re-shot. Joel Silver approached Dohring "out of the blue and said,'There's a role, I'm making it younger'". Dohring read two pages of script featuring Josef, was interested by the character's "dark" and "sharp" personality. Dohring had to go through the normal audition process and was not sure if he would have gotten the role without Silver, who had "pushed it all the way through to the end". Munson explained that the goal of the casting changes was "to lighten the show up a bit", he believed the changes granted the studio's and network's wish to "make it a little younger and hipper". O'Loughlin felt that the whole cast's becoming "a little bit younger" affected the character Josef, as the chosen actor, Šerbedžija, was twice Jason Dohring's age; the creators and the network were concerned that Josef, whose relationship with Mick was important, would appear as more of a "father figure" rather than as a friend.
O'Loughlin supported the recasting of Josef with a younger actor due to the resulting "level of ease in that age difference". To promote the series and the main cast attended the Comic-Con International on July 27, 2007, where the series was featured. Moonlight premiered on September 28, 2007, airing on Friday nights at 9:00/8:00c on CBS, following Ghost Whisperer. Internationally, CTV began airing the series in Canada in simulcast with the American broadcast; the series finale aired on May 2008 in the United States. The Sci Fi Channel began airing repeats of the series on January 23, 2009 on Fridays at 9 pm/ET; the series averaged one million viewers per episode on the Sci Fi Channel, making it one of the better-performing acquired series of the channel in recent years. Warner Home Video released the complete first season on DVD on January 20, 2009. Episodes are showing on Irish TV Channel 3e. On May 5, 2010, it was announced that reruns of the series would be paired with The Vampire Diaries repeats throughout the summer on The CW.
Alex O'Loughlin portrays Mick St. John, a private investigator, turned i
Bath, Somerset
Bath is the largest city in the ceremonial county of Somerset, known for its Roman-built baths. In 2011, the population was 88,859. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, 97 miles west of London and 11 miles south-east of Bristol; the city became a World Heritage site in 1987. The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquae Sulis c. 60 AD when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although hot springs were known before then. Bath Abbey became a religious centre. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of water from the springs, Bath became popular as a spa town in the Georgian era. Georgian architecture, crafted from Bath stone, includes the Royal Crescent, Pump Room and Assembly Rooms where Beau Nash presided over the city's social life from 1705 until his death in 1761. Many of the streets and squares were laid out by John Wood, the Elder, in the 18th century the city became fashionable and the population grew. Jane Austen lived in Bath in the early 19th century.
Further building was undertaken in the 19th century and following the Bath Blitz in World War II. The city has software and service-oriented industries. Theatres and other cultural and sporting venues have helped make it a major centre for tourism, with more than one million staying visitors and 3.8 million day visitors to the city each year. There are several museums including the Museum of Bath Architecture, the Victoria Art Gallery, the Museum of East Asian Art, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and the Holburne Museum; the city has two universities – the University of Bath and Bath Spa University – with Bath College providing further education. Sporting clubs include Bath Rugby and Bath City F. C.. Bath became part of the county of Avon in 1974, following Avon's abolition in 1996, has been the principal centre of Bath and North East Somerset; the hills in the locality such as Bathampton Down saw human activity from the Mesolithic period. Several Bronze Age round barrows were opened by John Skinner in the 18th century.
Solsbury Hill overlooking the current city was an Iron Age hill fort, the adjacent Bathampton Camp may have been one. A long barrow site believed to be from the Beaker people was flattened to make way for RAF Charmy Down. Archaeological evidence shows that the site of the Roman baths' main spring may have been treated as a shrine by the Britons, was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva. Messages to her scratched onto metal, known as curse tablets, have been recovered from the sacred spring by archaeologists; the tablets were written in Latin, cursed people whom the writers felt had wronged them. For example, if a citizen had his clothes stolen at the baths, he might write a curse, naming the suspects, on a tablet to be read by the goddess. A temple was constructed in AD 60–70, a bathing complex was built up over the next 300 years. Engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation, surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead.
In the 2nd century, the spring was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted structure that housed the caldarium and frigidarium. The town was given defensive walls in the 3rd century. After the failure of Roman authority in the first decade of the 5th century, the baths fell into disrepair and were lost as a result of rising water levels and silting. In March 2012 a hoard of 30,000 silver Roman coins, one of the largest discovered in Britain, was unearthed in an archaeological dig; the coins, believed to date from the 3rd century, were found about 150 m from the Roman baths. Bath may have been the site of the Battle of Badon, in which King Arthur is said to have defeated the Anglo-Saxons; the town was captured by the West Saxons in 577 after the Battle of Deorham. A monastery was founded at an early date – reputedly by Saint David although more in 675 by Osric, King of the Hwicce using the walled area as its precinct. Nennius, a 9th-century historian, mentions a "Hot Lake" in the land of the Hwicce along the River Severn, adds "It is surrounded by a wall, made of brick and stone, men may go there to bathe at any time, every man can have the kind of bath he likes.
If he wants, it will be a cold bath. Bede described hot baths in the geographical introduction to the Ecclesiastical History in terms similar to those of Nennius. King Offa of Mercia gained control of the monastery in 781 and rebuilt the church, dedicated to St. Peter. According to the Victorian churchman Edward Churton, during the Anglo-Saxon era Bath was known as Acemannesceastre, or'aching men's city', on account of the reputation these springs had for healing the sick. By the 9th century the old Roman street pattern was lost and Bath was a royal possession. King Alfred laid out the town afresh. In the Burghal Hidage, Bath is recorded as a burh and is described as having walls of 1,375 yards and was allocated 1000 men for defence. During the reign of Edward the Elder coins were minted in Bath based on a design from the Winchester mint but with'BAD' on the obverse relating to the Anglo-Saxon name for the town, Baðum, Baðan or Baðon, meaning "at the baths", this was the
Varney, the Vampyre public domain audiobook at LibriVox