Product Description

The true, shocking saga of "Countess Dracula" Elizabeth Bathory , who tortured and killed hundreds of virgins and bathed in their blood in order to prolong her youth.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #598052 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 102 pages

Synopsis
The chilling true story of Erzsebet Bathory, a 17th century Hungarian Countess who bathed in the blood of girls. Descended from one of the most ancient aristocratic families in Europe, her many castles literally become a murder factory where hundreds of girls were killed and processed for the ultimate, youth-giving ritual: the bath of blood.

Customer Reviews

a fine read.
Erszebet Bathory, a truly terrible woman who is reputed to have murdered over 600 young women, gets a fairly poetic treatment here. The author writes beautifully, and her descriptions of Hungary in the early 17th century are wonderfully rich. This is a difficult place and era to write about as it is so very complex, with endless warring tribal factions, and tangled relationships between the families of the aristocracry. Penrose leads us through all this with deftness.

Poetic though her writing is, she doesn't try to redeem Bathory's crimes, or try to make out she was fitted up by jealous noblemen (as another author on this subject does). Bathory was evil, pure and simple. It's more curious to us in the 21st century that because of her position she was able to get away with her horrendous crimes for as long as she did. And people certainly knew about them. Eventually more and more villagers refused to let their young women take jobs in her household, and the Countess had to go further and further afield for victims.

Sometimes it must be said though that the author could have done with a more diligent editor. Take this description of the town of Presbourg: "the inhabitants, men and women with pallid faces, wore their hair and beards long ..." That must have been an interesting sight! Likewise purists may take exception to her claiming to know what the Countess was thinking at certain times, as this is beyond the range of a biographer. But then this isn't exactly a conventional biography, and that's no bad thing!

Portrait of Erzsèbet Báthory
For those of you who don't know who this is read this: The Bloody Countess or Erzsèbet Báthory lived in Hungary from 1560 to 1614. She believed that by bathing in blood from female virgins she could stay young. Together with two other women she caused the death of some 650 women. She was finally caught and sentenced to ...

Penrose explains her way of thinking, her methods of torture, and how she lured the young girls into their death. In also contains descriptions of her and her husband's relatives and how she consulted a witch to make her more vicious. It is a very interesting book.