Full Description
In 1816, John William Polidori travelled to Geneva as Lord Byron's personal physician. There they met Mary Godwin (later Shelley) and her lover Percy Shelley and decided to while away a wet summer by writing ghost stories. The only two to complete their stories were Mary Shelley, who published Frankenstein in 1818, and Polidori, whose The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold were both published in 1819.
The Vampyre, based on a discarded idea of Byron's, is the first portrayal of the alluring vampire figure familiar to readers of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice. Ernestus Berchtold scandalously draws on the rumours of Byron's affair with his half-sister for a Faustian updating of the myth of Oedipus, which it combines with an account of the struggle of Swiss patriots against the Napoleonic invasion.
Along with Polidori's work, this edition also includes stories read and written by the travellers in the Genevan summer of 1816 and contemporary responses to The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
John William Polidori: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Texts
The Vampyre: A Tale
Ernestus Berchtold; or,The Modern Œdipus
Appendix A: Ghost Stories
From Tales of the Dead (1813)
"The Family Portraits"
"The Death-Bride"
Lord Byron, "A Fragment" (1819)
P.B. Shelley, "Fragment of a Ghost-Story" (1816)
P.B. Shelley, "Journal at Geneva (including Ghost Stories)" (1816)
Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews
The Vampyre
Edinburgh Monthly Review 1 (1819)
Monthly Review 89 (May-August 1819)
Ernestus Berchtold; or, the Modern Œdipus
Edinburgh Monthly Review 4 (1820)
European Magazine 76 (1819)
Literary Gazette 136 (28 August 1819)
Works Cited and Recommended Reading
