The Vampyre by Lord Byron or John Polidori?
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824), more commonly known as Lord Byron, was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. As well as being a poet, politician, and revolutionary, he was a legitimate celebrity during the early 19th century. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Byron had a prolific career with such works as Manfred, Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and many short poems as well. In his longer poem, The Giaour (1813), Byron tells the story of Leila, a girl in her master Hassan's harem, who loves "the Giaour," or "Unbeliever" in Turkish. Hassan finds out and drowns Leila. Then, "the Giaour" kills Hassan. This work is notable because Byron mentions such supernatural creatures as ghouls and vampires in this poem. Another instance of Byron's influence on vampire literature was the publication of the short story, "A Fragment of a Novel,' in 1819 where the main character, Sir Augustus Darvell, turns out to be avampire. This is significant because this text as well as the publication of his personal physician John Polidori’s work "The Vampyre", mark the official start of vampire literature in the English language.
John Polidori (1795-1821) is credited with inventing the vampire genre. However, it has been shown that he had a lot of assistance along the way. A doctor by trade, Polidori is mainly famous for his association with Lord Byron, as well as Percy and Mary Shelley. According to tradition, Polidori accompanied Byron to Lake Geneva in Switzerland during the summer of 1816. One night in June, the group were taking turns reading aloud tales from Fantasmagoriana, a collection of German horror stories written in French. This led to the infamous ghost story contest in which all four in attendance were challenged to write the best ghost story. Famously, the story that Mary Shelley began became her novel Frankenstein. The work that Polidori began became his novella “The Vampyre”.
Although Polidori clearly wrote “The Vampyre”, no one seemed to believe him at first. When it was initially published in The New Monthly Magazine, Lord Byron was thought to be the true author of this tale. Byron himself disavowed the work and published his own "Fragment of a Novel" to show the differences between the two. Still, no one believed either Byron and Polidori. It did not help matters that the story's title character, "Lord Ruthven," was a name used by Lady Caroline Lamb in her novel Glenarvon to denote a character who was a clear derisive parody of Byron himself. As can be seen in the image, Byron was still attributed as the author as late as 1880. Byron and Polidori soon had a falling out after the summer in Geneva, with Byron leaving Polidori in Italy with no way to get back home to England. Once in England, Polidori published his work. Polidori soon left the medical field to attempt a career as an author. It did not work out. Depressed and awash in huge amounts of gambling debt, Polidori committed suicide in 1821 by poisoning himself with cyanide. Although he never received the proper recognition in his lifetime, Polidori’s novella is now seen as the first official vampire story in English literature