3.0
The Vampyre
ByPublisher Description
A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society's elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey's imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend's glamorous facade.
When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey's sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.
John William Polidori's
is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker's
, and misattributed to Polidori's friend Lord Byron,
has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Vampyre Reviews
3.0
“The first vampire story was shorter than I thought. I liked how Lord Ruthven tormented Lord Audrey and I was kinda lowkey happy (and sad) that Lord Audrey did not have a happy ending with Ianthe. He described her as infantile and uneducated 😤 which made him be enthralled more. She was too much for him, so much so that she died protecting him.
I also liked how Lord Ruthven married his sister as a final “fuck you” to Lord Audrey. His pettyness was very well translated by Bram Stroker’s Dracula. So sad she had to die when she was arguably the most interesting character based on how her brother described her. I wish we would have learned more about her.
All in all a good and enjoyable story. I was pleased to learn that it came about from the same competition as Frankestein. That is why he is so obsessed of Lord Byron’s philanthropic and eccentric lifestyle. It could have probably been all in jest.”
“Pretty good story for one of the first vampire stories and a short one. Takes a bit to get interesting and sentences and paragraphs are long with some old-fashioned phrasing so not the easiest read but good lead up to the ending and focuses on disbelief of vampires and the dead coming back and the main character’s seeming descent into madness and illness.
It definitely had potential to be made longer and flesh out the characters, setting and plot with more confrontation and witnesses between the vampire and the humans but it was a decent short story. I liked the subtle build-up to the reveal that his sister was engaged to the vampire.
Glad to have read this before things like Dracula and Carmilla to see the differences and inspirations and evolutions of vampire stories.”
“The blueprint for everything that followed. I liked that there's no happy ending here; the Vampyre wins. The tension between Aubrey and Ruthven 😙 👌 .
I gotta say the origin and drama behind this story is even juicier than the text itself.”
About John William Polidori
John William Polidori (1795–1821) is credited as the creator of the modern vampire story and the fantasy subgenre. Polidori received his degree as a doctor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and soon afterward, he became the personal physician of writer Lord Byron. One night in 1816, Polidori, Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Shelley decided to write ghost stories together. On this night, Polidori’s classic novella
was conceived. The story was published anonymously without Polidori’s permission in
, but he later took credit for the work. Polidori spent his later years deeply depressed and fell into debt from gambling. It is rumored that Polidori committed suicide at the age of twenty-six. His revolutionary treatment of vampire as a romantic figure continues to inspire writers in the romantic and horror genres.
Other books by John William Polidori
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