The
Vampyre

In the summer of 1816, trapped indoors by the coldest summer in living memory, a small group of English writers on the shores of Lake Geneva challenged each other to write a ghost story. Mary Godwin began what would become Frankenstein. John Polidori wrote The Vampyre.

Published in 1819 and initially misattributed to Lord Byron, The Vampyre introduced a figure the world had never seen: not the bloated corpse of Eastern European folklore, but a polished aristocrat who moves through London drawing rooms with perfect composure, destroying the virtuous and the innocent while society holds the door open for him.

This Ovid Publishing Group edition includes the editor's introduction, Polidori's own introduction, the complete story, and full analysis and chapter notes, placing the text in its literary and historical context. The Vampyre is the origin point of the charismatic vampire — the ancestor of every brooding, dangerous aristocrat in two centuries of horror fiction, from Carmilla to Dracula to the present day.

The Vampire Library brings together the foundational texts of vampire fiction alongside the essential history of the genre — from Polidori's 1819 aristocratic predator through Le Fanu's sapphic Gothic masterpiece, and the popular history tracing the creature from ancient world folklore through two centuries of art, literature, and cinema.