Once thought to have been written by Lord Byron, The Vampyre is one of the earliest fictions about vampires. It precedes Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 78 years!
In the summer of 1816 Europe suffered a climate abnormality. Holed up in a chateau near Lake Geneva, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Dr John Polidori were kept inside by three days of rain. To pass the time indoors yhe five romantics read aloud from a French anthology of German ghost stories, Fantasmagoriana. Inspired by these, and their own experiences, both Mary Shelley and Dr John Polidori would produce their own fantastic tales. Mary Shelley’s was of course Frankenstein, Polidori’s was The Vampyre.
Check out narrator Gregg Wagland‘s worthy reading of The Vampyre by Dr John Polidori.
Posted by Jesse Willis