Name: John William Polidori's The Vampyre
Author: John William Polidori

Ex Carta

 introduced the aristocratic vampire Lord Ruthven, establishing many of the tropes that would later shape Bram Stoker’s

 and modern vampire fiction. Moving from fashionable London society to Italy and Greece, the story draws on regional vampire traditions while playing on contemporary contrasts between Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and the perceived superstition of Europe’s rural margins.

‘The Vampyre’ by John William Polidori (1795–1821) is widely considered to be the starting point for one of the most iconic literary and pop-cultural figures of the modern era: Count Dracula. As well as establishing some of the key tropes of vampire lore – including blood sucking, hypnotic suggestion, and reanimation – it established the figure of the vampire as a truly cosmopolitan figure, striding across Europe and leaving chaos and despair in its wake.

Contributing to the success of the book were the breathless rumours that accompanied its publication: Lord Ruthven was based on Lord Byron; Byron had left a similar wake of suicide and murder in his travels across Europe; the tale was in fact written by Lord Byron as a confession, rather than his physician Dr Polidori.50 Polidori was certainly a friend of Byron’s and an apocryphal tradition has it that both ‘The Vampyre’ and 

 (1818) were written as the result of a challenge set down by Byron when he, Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and (the then) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin were holidaying over a wet summer at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. What is less contentious is that Polidori was influenced by Byron in both the conception of the tale and the character of its villain.

Polidori’s Lord Ruthven first appears in the salons and ballrooms of London, seducing and corrupting debutantes and fascinating high society. The action soon moves east however, as the protagonist, Aubrey, travels with Ruthven first to Italy and then to Greece. It is here that Aubrey first hears legends of the undead and he can’t help but connect what he learns to his acquaintance Ruthven. Polidori uses authentic folklore from different traditions – mentioning ‘Vroucolocha, Vardoulacha, Goul, Broucoloka, &c.’ – to give his narrative a convincing verisimilitude, rooted in place and location.

The tale is weakened in its telling by Polidori’s lack of dramatic flair; the story is presented in a rather brisk, stolid manner lacking narrative sophistication. However, despite various further iterations of the vampire found in works such as 

 (1845–1847) and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 

 (1872), it was Polidori’s template that Bram Stoker used when he created the definitive version in 

 (1897). 'The Vampyre' remains a literary wellspring from which myriad books, films, games, comics, and, of course, maps continue to flow. It also establishes the vampire as a transnational figure, invidiously travelling from territory to territory, spreading its diabolic evil from remote, foreign regions to the heart of the modern capital.