THE VAMPYRE; A TALE. [Polidori, John William]:

First edition, third Sherwood issue (Viets issue IV), with "lmost" printed on p. 36, and the references to Mary Godwin and Jane Clermont removed. Vampire story written by Byron's physician John Polidori from an idea of his patron's; the character of Lord Ruthven the vampire was clearly derived from Polidori's observation of Byron (and an allusion to the savage portrait of Byron in Glenarvon, the 1816 roman à clef by Lady Caroline Lamb). Polidori was present during the famed conversations of Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley in Switzerland in June 1816 that prompted Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein (1818). The tale was first published as by Lord Byron, who repudiated the assertion. This issue reset the half-title and title, but didn't note Polidori as its author. Bram Stoker used Polidori's Vampyre and J. S. Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1872) as well as elements of folklore to create his classic Dracula (1897). Uncommon. ASHLEY 3:208. WISE BYRON 2:72. WOLFF 5577. Henry R. Viets, "The London Editions of Polidori's The Vampyre" in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. 63, no. 2 (Second Quarter, 1969), p.83. Sewn, untrimmed in 19th-century plain blue wrapper. Some foxing, faint tidemark in gutters of pp. 66 to end, upper forecorner of p.83 stained, still a reasonably good copy.