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The rare first appearance in print of the first modern vampire novel, with the subtitle naming Byron as its author. The first outlines of The Vampyre were conceived by Byron at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in 1816, during the same celebrated night of competitive storytelling that originated Frankenstein. His physician, John Polidori, was present that night, and later the same year produced an extended version. His "development" was "written on the Continent, and left with a lady at whose request it was undertaken; in the course of three mornings by her side it was produced, and left with her" (Polidori, p. 152). The manuscript lay unpublished for three years until Henry Colburn came into its possession, publishing it in the April 1819 issue of his New Monthly Magazine. The anonymous preface recounts the night of storytelling "undertaken by Lord B., the physician [Polidori], and Miss M. W. Godwin", and in a footnote, purportedly by the magazine's editor, it is noted that the story told by "Miss Godwin... has already appeared under the title of Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus". This is one of the first published acknowledgements of Mary Shelley as the novel's author - the first, it seems, appeared just five days earlier in an advertisement for the present work, in the 27 March issue of the Literary Gazette. "When printed in the New Monthly Magazine, [The Vampyre] appeared to be relatively innocuous, but with Byron as the presumptive author the reaction in the highly sensitive literary world of the time was electric... The publisher of the New Monthly Magazine, when he inserted Byron's name in the place of Polidori's, was using a shoddy fabrication to promote the sale of his magazine and ultimately of the book, which followed almost immediately" (Viets, p. 83). The deception was resisted by Colburn's editor, Alaric Watts, who inserted a short statement on the magazine's first leaf attesting to Polidori's authorship, "but to his astonishment, Colburn cancelled the leaf on the day previous to publication, and contrary to, and in direct hostility to Watts' positive order, fearing that this statement would prevent the sale of this work in a separate form, which was subsequently done" (John Murray, letter to Byron, 27 April 1819). Copies were consequently issued with the first leaf on a stub. The April 1819 issue is here bound together with issues from February to July 1819. The May issue features a swift correction by Polidori. He writes that the editors were "mistaken in attributing that tale, in the present form, to Lord Byron. The fact is, that though the ground-work is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine" (p. 332). The book is offered together with the May 1819 issue of the Edinburgh Monthly Review, which includes a review of the novel on pp. 618-20. Though The Vampyre was successful, Polidori received neither recognition nor remuneration for it, and died two years later by suicide, drinking prussic acid. READ MORE Six issues bound in one, octavo (218 x 137 mm). Early 20th-century library binding of brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, web pattern endpapers, top edge brown. Library stamps of the Cleveland Public Library to pp. ii-iii and p. 580, remnants of shelf label to rear free endpaper. Light foxing to edges and occasionally to contents, earlier stab-holes visible in the gutter. A very good copy. John Polidori, The Diary, 1911; Henry R. Viets, "The London Editions of Polidori's 'The Vampyre'", Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 62, no. 2, 1969.

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.