Ianthe: a beautiful Greek woman Aubrey meets on his journeys with Ruthven
Aubrey's sister: who becomes engaged to the Earl of Marsden
Earl of Marsden: who is also Lord Ruthven
Plot
Aubrey meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven at a social event when he comes to London. After briefly getting to know Ruthven, Aubrey agrees to go travelling around Europe with him. Aubrey slowly realizes that Ruthven delights in causing the ruin and degradation of others, and after Ruthven attempts to seduce the daughter of a mutual acquaintance near Rome, Aubrey leaves in disgust. Alone, Aubrey travels to Greece where he falls in love with an innkeeper's daughter, Ianthe. She tells him about the legends of the vampire, which are very popular in the area, and Aubrey recognises that Ruthven fits the physical description.
This romance is short-lived: Ianthe is killed, her throat torn open by an attacker who injures Aubrey and leaves behind an unusual dagger. The whole town believes it to be the work of an evil vampire. Aubrey falls ill, but is found and nursed back to health by Ruthven. Although suspicious of the man, Aubrey feels obliged to Ruthven and rejoins him in his travels. The pair are attacked by bandits on the road and Ruthven is mortally wounded. On his deathbed, Ruthven makes Aubrey swear an oath that he will not speak of Ruthven or his death for a year and a day, and once Aubrey agrees, Lord Ruthven dies laughing. Amongst Ruthven's belongings Aubrey discovers a sheath which matches the dagger found by Ianthe's body.
Aubrey returns to London and is amazed when Ruthven appears shortly thereafter, alive and well. Ruthven reminds Aubrey of his oath and although Aubrey wants to warn others of Ruthven's character he feels unable to break his oath. Helpless to protect his sister from Ruthven, Aubrey has a nervous breakdown. Upon recovering, Aubrey learns that Ruthven has inherited an earldom and is engaged to his sister, and they are due to be married on the day that his oath will end. Unable to delay the wedding, Aubrey has a stroke. That night, his oath expires, and Aubrey relates the entire story before dying. But it is too late: Ruthven has disappeared, leaving his new wife dead and drained of blood.
Publication
The New Monthly Magazine, 1 April 1819.
"The Vampyre" was first published on 1 April 1819 by Henry Colburn in the New Monthly Magazine with the false attribution "A Tale by Lord Byron".[4] The name of the work's protagonist, "Lord Ruthven", added to this assumption, for that name was originally used in Lady Caroline Lamb's novel Glenarvon (from the same publisher), in which a thinly-disguised Byron figure was named Clarence de Ruthven, Earl of Glenarvon. Despite repeated denials by Byron and Polidori, the authorship often went unclarified. In the following issue, dated May 1, 1819, Polidori wrote a letter to the editor explaining "that though the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine".[5]
The tale was first published in book form by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones in London, Paternoster-Row, in 1819 in octavo as The Vampyre; A Tale in 84 pages. The notation on the cover noted that it was: "Entered at Stationers' Hall, March 27, 1819". Initially, the author was given as Lord Byron on the title page. After Polidori protested, later printings removed Byron's name from the title page but did not replace it with Polidori's.[6]
The story was an immediate popular success, partly because of the Byron attribution and partly because it exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public. Polidori transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into the form that is recognized today—an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society.[3] Due to this influential aspect, Jan Čapek argued that "Ruthven’s excesses in Polidori’s tale reveal the landscape of modern, increasingly capitalistic class society to be laden with anxiety concerning the continuing power of the aristocracy, as though untouched by the social shifts in the wake of the industrial revolution."[7]
The story has its genesis in the summer of 1816, the Year Without a Summer, when Europe and parts of North America underwent a severe climate abnormality. Lord Byron and his young physician John Polidori were staying at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva and were visited by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire Clairmont. Kept indoors by the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer",[8] over three days in June the five turned to telling fantastical tales, and then writing their own. Fueled by ghost stories such as the Fantasmagoriana, William Beckford's Vathek, and quantities of laudanum, Mary Shelley[9] produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, "Fragment of a Novel" (1816), also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", and in "two or three idle mornings" produced "The Vampyre".[10] While most scholars pursue Polidori's proximity to Byron as a decisive factor, Jan Čapek warns against a "Byromaniacal" reading of the tale, arguing that "such an infection of the discussion about Polidori with the germ of Byron’s controversial persona is somewhat paradoxical, considering that the resulting debate oscillates somewhere between a sense that Polidori’s conception itself reflects his own sense of the debilitating domination of Byron’s genius and a sense that Polidori attempted to take control in defence against such domination and wrote the tale in an attempt to satirize the effects of Byron’s proximity and to assert his own worth."[11]
Influence
Polidori's work had an immense impact on contemporary sensibilities and ran through numerous editions and translations. Jan Čapek argued that:
"Whether Polidori wrote 'The Vampyre' out of spite toward Byron or not, whether he is guilty of a measure of plagiarism, or whether he even intended to have the story published or not, the tale energizes a series of figurations of the vampire in what is now over two centuries long tradition of vampire prose fiction. No matter the mysterious occasions or the undisclosed motivations or intentions, Polidori’s 'The Vampyre' must be judged by its shaping of vampire fiction, giving it a true start which would capture the Victorian period as much as the vampire panic captured the Enlightened period and as much as it would later capture much of the twentieth century without the interest waning in the early decades of the twenty-first century. [...] John William Polidori unleashes the figure of the vampire, in all its aristocratic and privileged, rhetorically powerful and seductive, sexually potent and corruptive and, in any case, cunning and elusive power."[12]
That influence has extended into the current era as the text is seen as "canonical" and– together with Bram Stoker's Dracula and others– is "often even cited as almost folkloric sources on vampirism".[2] An adaptation appeared in 1820 with Cyprien Bérard's novel Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires, falsely attributed to Charles Nodier, who himself then wrote his own dramatic version, Le Vampire, a play which had enormous success and sparked a "vampire craze" across Europe. This includes operatic adaptations by Heinrich Marschner (see Der Vampyr) and Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (see Der Vampyr), both published in the same year. Nikolai Gogol, Alexandre Dumas and Aleksey Tolstoy all produced vampire tales, and themes in Polidori's tale would continue to influence Bram Stoker's Dracula and eventually the whole vampire genre. Dumas makes explicit reference to Lord Ruthven in The Count of Monte Cristo, going so far as to state that his character "The Comtesse G..." had been personally acquainted with Lord Ruthven.[13]
In 1819, The Black Vampyre, an American novella by Uriah D'Arcy, was published, taking advantage of The Vampyre's popularity.[14]
Film adaptation
In 2016 it was announced that the studio Britannia Pictures would be releasing a feature-length adaptation of The Vampyre. Production for the film was slated to begin in late 2018, with filming taking place in the UK, Italy and Greece.[15] The film would be directed by Rowan M. Ashe and was scheduled for release in October 2019.[16]
Earlier adaptations of Polidori's story include the 1945 film The Vampire's Ghost starring John Abbott as the Lord Ruthven character "Webb Fallon", with the setting changed from England and Greece to Africa.[17] Also, The Vampyr: A Soap Opera, based on the opera Der Vampyr by Heinrich Marschner and the Polidori story, was filmed and broadcast on BBC 2 on December 2, 1992, with the Lord Ruthven character's name changed to "Ripley", who is frozen in the late eighteenth century but revives in modern times and becomes a successful businessman.[18]
Theatrical adaptations
In England, James Planché's play The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles was first performed in London in 1820 at the Lyceum Theatre[19] based on Charles Nodier's Le Vampire, which in turn was based on Polidori.[20] Such melodramas were satirised in Ruddigore, by Gilbert and Sullivan (1887), a character called Sir Ruthven must abduct a maiden, or he will die.[21]
In 1988, American playwright Tim Kelly created a drawing room adaptation of The Vampyre for the stage, popular among community theatres and high school drama clubs.[22]
Related Research Articles
John William Polidori was a British writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), the first published modern vampire story. Although the story was at first erroneously credited to Lord Byron, both Byron and Polidori affirmed that the author was Polidori.
Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron. Later influential works include the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847); Sheridan Le Fanu's tale of a lesbian vampire, Carmilla (1872), and the most well known: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Some authors created a more "sympathetic vampire", with Varney being the first, and more recent examples such as Moto Hagio's series The Poe Clan (1972–1976) and Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) proving influential.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1819.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1816.
Ianthe may refer to:
Gothic is a 1986 British psychological horror film directed by Ken Russell, starring Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, Myriam Cyr as Claire Clairmont and Timothy Spall as Dr. John William Polidori. It features a soundtrack by Thomas Dolby, and marks Richardson's and Cyr's film debut.
Fantasmagoriana is a French anthology of German ghost stories, translated anonymously by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès and published in 1812. Most of the stories are from the first two volumes of Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun's Gespensterbuch (1810–1811), with other stories by Johann Karl August Musäus and Heinrich Clauren.
Lord Ruthven is a fictional character. First appearing in print in 1819, in John William Polidori's "The Vampyre", he was one of the first vampires in English literature. The name Ruthven was taken from Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (1816), where it was used as an unflattering parody of Lord Byron, while the character was based on Augustus Darvell from Byron's "Fragment of a Novel" (1819). "The Vampyre" was written privately, and published without Polidori's consent, with revisions to the story made by Polidori for an unpublished second edition showing that he planned to change the name from Ruthven to Strongmore. The initial popularity of "The Vampyre" led to the character appearing in many translations and adaptations, including plays and operas, and Ruthven has continued to appear in modern works. The Lord Ruthven Award (1989–present) by the Lord Ruthven Assembly is named after the character.
The Giaour is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1813 by John Murray and printed by Thomas Davison. It was the first in the series of Byron's Oriental romances. The Giaour proved to be a great success when published, consolidating Byron's reputation critically and commercially.
Johann August Apel was a German writer and jurist. Apel was born and died in Leipzig.
Frankenstein: The True Story is a 1973 British made-for-television film loosely based on the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. It was directed by Jack Smight, and the screenplay was written by novelist Christopher Isherwood and his longtime partner Don Bachardy.
The Villa Diodati is a mansion in the village of Cologny near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, notable because Lord Byron rented it and stayed there with Dr. John Polidori in the summer of 1816. Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, who had rented a house nearby, were frequent visitors. Because of poor weather, in June 1816 the group famously spent three days together inside the house creating stories to tell each other, two of which were developed into landmark works of the Gothic horror genre: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Vampyre, the first modern vampire story, by Polidori.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
"Fragment of Novel" is an unfinished 1819 vampire horror story written by Lord Byron. The story, also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme. The main character was Augustus Darvell. John William Polidori based his novella The Vampyre (1819), originally attributed in print to Lord Byron, on the Byron fragment. The vampire in the Polidori story, Lord Ruthven, was modelled on Byron himself. The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in the summer of 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley where a "ghost writing" contest was proposed. This contest was also what led to the creation of Frankenstein according to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1818 Preface to the novel. The story is important in the development and evolution of the vampire story in English literature as one of the first to feature the modern vampire as able to function in society in disguise. The short story first appeared under the title "A Fragment" in the 1819 collection Mazeppa: A Poem, published by John Murray in London.
Rowing with the Wind a.k.a. Remando al viento is a 1988 Spanish film written and directed by Gonzalo Suárez. The film won seven Goya Awards. It concerns the English writer Mary Shelley and her circle.
Carl Gottlieb Samuel Heun, better known by his pen name Heinrich Clauren, was a German author.
English writer Lord Byron has been mentioned in numerous media. A few examples of his appearances in literature, film, music, television and theatre are listed below.
The Vampire, formally known as The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, is a play written by James Robinson Planché. It was premiered on the London stage in 1820 as the first appearance of the vampire as an image of sophistication and nobility.
"The Spectre-Barber" is a short story, written by Johann Karl August Musäus included in his satirical retellings of collected folk stories, Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1786). The story was translated into French by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès as part of his collection of German ghost-stories Fantasmagoriana (1812), which inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1816). This French translation was then partially translated into English in Tales of the Dead (1813), followed by more complete translations from the original German, such as those by Thomas Roscoe (1826), and Thomas Carlyle (1827), with a child-friendly abridged version being published in 1845.
The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo is an American short story published in 1819 by the pseudonymous Uriah Derick D'Arcy. It is credited as "the first black vampire story, the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mulatto vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and perhaps the first anti-slavery short story." The Black Vampyre tells the story of a black slave, who is resurrected as a vampire after being killed by his captor; the slave seeks revenge on his captor and achieves it by stealing the captor's son and marrying the captor's wife. D'Arcy sets the story against the conditions that led to the Haitian Revolution.
↑ Shelley, Mary (1831), Frankenstein (introduction to Thirded.)
↑ Owchar, Nick (11 October 2009), "The Siren's Call: An epic poet as Mary Shelley's co-author. A new edition of Frankenstein shows the contributions of her husband, Percy", Los Angeles Times
Rhodes, Jerry (30 September 2009), "New paperback by UD professor offers two versions of Frankenstein tale", UDaily, University of Delaware, Charles E. Robinson: "These italics used for Percy Shelley's words make even more visible the half-dozen or so places where, in his own voice, he made substantial additions to the 'draft' of Frankenstein."
Pratt, Lynda (29 October 2008), Who wrote the original Frankenstein? Mary Shelley created a monster out of her 'waking dream' – but was it her husband Percy who 'embodied its ideas and sentiments'?, The Sunday Times
Adams, Stephen (24 August 2008), Percy Bysshe Shelley helped wife Mary write Frankenstein, claims professor: Mary Shelley received extensive help in writing Frankenstein from her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading academic has claimed, Telegraph, Charles E. Robinson: "He made very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as 'by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley'.
Rosner, Victoria (29 September 2009), "Co-Creating a Monster.", The Huffington Post, Random House recently published a new edition of the novel Frankenstein with a surprising change: Mary Shelley is no longer identified as the novel's sole author. Instead, the cover reads 'Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley).'
↑ Byron, George Gordon (1997), Morrison, Robert; Baldick, Chris (eds.), The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-955241-X
↑ Bray, Katie (2015). ""A Climate . . . More Prolific . . . in Sorcery": The Black Vampyre and the Hemispheric Gothic". American Literature. 87: 2. doi:10.1215/00029831-2865163.
↑ Bradley, p. 731; Polidori and Planché are precursors to and context for Gilbert. See Williams, Carolyn. Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody, p. 277, Columbia University Press (2010) ISBN0231148046
Beresford, Matthew: The Lord Byron / John Polidori relationship and the foundation of the early nineteenth-century literary vampire. Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2019;
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