B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 35 "THE FIRST VAMPIRE STORY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE": POLIDORI'S VAMPYRE, 1819 35. POLIDORI, John William. The Vampyre; A Tale. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1819. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter calf, marbled boards. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $9000 First edition of "the "rst vampire story in English literature"—"rst issue to remove Lord Byron's name from the title page, practically the earliest obtainable issue and the "rst issue widely available to the public (all earlier issues having been successfully suppressed to remove the fraudulent attribution of authorship to Byron). Dr. Polidori, Lord Byron's physician, conceived this important gothic tale at Lake Geneva when he accompanied Byron on a visit with Percy and Mary Shelley in 1816. In the course of a long, late-night conversation, the group's imaginations turned to the monstrous, the supernatural, and the undead. "We shall each write a ghost story," Byron proclaimed. His injunction prompted Mary's Frankenstein; Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which reached print in the April 1, 1819 issue of the New Monthly Magazine as "The Vampyre: A Tale by Lord Byron." This conscious fraud was perpetuated in the !rst book edition, published by Colburn. Byron wrote to John Murray, his publisher, "I have got your extract, and The Vampire. I need not say it is not mine… what is not published by you is not written by me" (Quennell, 449). "Generally recognized as the !rst vampire story in English literature, Polidori's novella is the forerunner of the sophisticated vampirism of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and, in the 20th century, Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire" (Tymn, I:304). This issue, the second Sherwood, Neely & Jones issue (with 1818 watermarks) was the !rst to drop Byron's name from the title page and is the issue that was widely released for purchase and review, all previous issues having been successfully suppressed and corrected. This copy includes these corrections, but retains the earlier misprint of "lmost" on the last line of page 36, found corrected in some copies. Bound without scarce half title. Together with a 1968 !ne press illustrated edition of The Vampyre that includes a brief life of Polidori. Text generally clean; spine rubbed, rear joint just starting, binding sound. Desirable in contemporary binding.
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