John William Polidori’s The Vampyre 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.
The Vampyre is a short novel written by John William Polidori and is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The Vampyre was first published on April 1, 1819, by Colburn in the New Monthly Magazine with the false attribution “A Tale by Lord Byron.”
"I breathe freely in the neighbourhood of this lake; the ground upon which I tread has been subdued from the earliest ages; the principal objects which immediately strike my eye, bring to my recollection scenes, in which man acted the hero and was the chief object of interest. Not to look back to...
Perhaps the oldest horror short story featured at American Literature, The Vampyre is considered the first in a genre which became known as romantic vampire gothic fiction.