In June of 1816, while on a journey with Lord Byron (for whom he was serving as personal physician), John William Polidori found himself in Lake Geneva in the company of a teenage Mary Wollstonecraft, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. On a dark and stormy night, Byron suggested they each sit down and attempt to write an original ghost story. In response to this challenge, Wollstonecraft would create a tale that later became the basis for Frankenstein, while Polidori borrowed a character created by Byron to craft The Vampyre, the first vampire story published in English.
Presented here is that story, the Grandfather of all Vampire Fiction: John William Polidori’s ‚The Vampyre, ‚ just as it was originally published, in its unedited and unabridged format.
Über den Autor
John William Polidori (1795-1821) was a British author and physician, best known as the creator of the genre that became known as ‚vampire fiction.‘ Born in Westminster, Polidori received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh at the age of nineteen. After becoming the personal physician of Lord Byron, the two of them traveled through Europe together and Polidori was paid 500 pounds to chronicle their travels in a diary that was published posthumously.In June of 1816, while on his road trip with Byron, Polidori found himself in Lake Geneva in the company of Mary Wollstonecraft, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont when- on a dark and stormy night- Byron suggested they each attempt to write an original ghost story. Wollstonecraft would create a story that later became the basis for Frankenstein, while Polidori borrowed a character created by Byron to craft The Vampyre, the first vampire story published in English. (The story was, at first, erroneously credited to Lord Byron, much to the chagrin of both authors). While Polidori would publish a variety of different works, including medical papers, poems, plays and an additional novella, he would die very young – at twenty-five – after suffering from depression and financial ruin. ‚The Vampyre‘ remains his enduring work and Polidori will be remembered chiefly for founding this genre of horror fiction.
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