"The Vampyre - A Tale" was originally published by John William Polidori in London in 1819 (Sherwood, Neely and Jones). Note that this book was published some seventy years before Bram Stoker's Dracula!
The cover for this edition shows a sepia print of an aristocratic gentleman holding a rose up to the side of his face. Very spooky from the get go! The presentation here is not just the story - several of Polidori's short writings are included. There is a short note by Polidori referencing a very well known gathering at a lake house outside of Geneva in the summer of 1816, with guests that included Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelly), her sister, and Polidori. Lord Byron handed out pen and paper, with instructions to write ghost stories. The groundwork was laid here for some incredible writing, including Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus", Percy Shelly's "Fragments Of A Ghost Story", and Byron's "Fragment Of A Novel", which became the basis for "Vampyre - A Tale".
"Extract Of A Letter From Geneva" gives the reader a great deal of background information about the area surrounding Geneva, the houses, who lived in them, and the emergence of women as a force in the writing world. He also speaks of how Lord Byron interacted with the people around him - which was really very strangely.
In the Introduction, the foundation is put down for the superstition upon which this work is based. It was considered to be It was relatively common in the east, especially amongst Arabians. It came intot he Greek mythos after the advent of Christianity, and took its present form after the division of the Latin and Greek churches. There is a very interesting account from the London Journal in March of 1732 of a case of vampyrism in Madregya, Hungary.
The story itself is all about a wealthy young gentleman by the name of Aubrey. Romantic by nature,his chance meeting with Lord Ruthven would change his life, and that of his sister, forever. Along the way he travels to Europe with Lord Ruthven - a cold man who seems set on bringing other people down. he eventually parts ways with Ruthven, and finds his way to Greece, where he meets a lovely, if uneducated, young Greek girl. As fate will have it, she dies at the hand of a vampyre, and Aubrey himself becomes deadly ill. Lord Ruthven is at his side to bring him back to health, and the two decide to travel together tot he parts of Greece that neither have seen. Ruthven dies at the hands of bandits, but not before he extracts a promise from Aubrey not to speak of his death.
Aubrey heads back to London, where his sister is about to come out. Who should appear at her coming out party but Ruthven himself! Aubrey goes through a series of crisis, and ends up unable to stop Ruthven from marrying his sister. On his deathbed, Aubrey convinces his guardians to go and save her. Alas, they are too late!
While this story is quite short, and could have gone into more detail, it is well worth reading. The thought of an elegant vampyre (and this story did act as the prototype for such vampyres) is quite intriguing! A story not of innocence lost, but of innocence destroyed.
