Books

London: John Miller, 1819, 1819. THE EXCEEDINGLY RARE PIRATED PRINTING WITH BYRON'S NAME ON THE TITLE PAGE. 1 vol., 20.8mm x 13.8mm, 46pp., with the half-title, complete, extracted, internally clean and bright. Housed in a cloth clamshell box, gilt lettered black morocco spine label. OCLC locates only 8 copies in institutions. Seven in the U.S. and one in the UK. Polidori's famous story was first published in the ''New Monthly Magazine'' for April 1, 1819, shamelessly ascribed to Lord Byron, as was the first issue of the separate printing. In the May edition of New Monthly, much to the readers' surprise, a letter by Dr. John Polidori (Lord Byron's physician) was published. He acknowledged the fact that the tale was based loosely upon a story which Byron had begun and summarily abandoned, and Polidori insisted that The Vampyre was his own work. "As the contents of the New Monthly Magazine were not copyrighted in 1819, anyone was free to publish the…

The Vampyre was written by John William Polidori in 1819. It is considered one of the first modern vampire stories and was inspired by a story fragment written by Lord Byron during the famous 1816 gathering at the Villa Diodati, where Mary Shelley also conceived Frankenstein. Polidori's novella introduced the aristocratic vampire archetype, which influenced later vampire literature, including Bram Stoker's Dracula.