The Vampire of Vourla and Other Greek Vampire Tales, 1819-1846
Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
Vampires are usually associated in the popular imagination with Transylvania and other Eastern European locales. But in this new collection, editor Álvaro García Marín has uncovered the earliest appearances of vampires in English literature, revealing their surprising origin in Greece. This volume includes two seminal classic texts, Lord Byron's "Fragment of a Novel" and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre", together with five other rare and never-before-reprinted vampire tales from the early 19th century, including the important and inexplicably neglected "The Vampire of Vourla". Also featured is a scholarly introduction by Prof. Marín, delving into this forgotten field of vampire literary history and situating it within the larger Romantic era and 19th-century English attitudes toward Greece.
Lord Byron
Lord Byron was an English poet and the most infamous of the English Romantics, glorified for his immoderate ways in both love and money. Benefitting from a privileged upbringing, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage upon his return from his Grand Tour in 1811, and the poem was received with such acclaim that he became the focus of a public mania. Following the dissolution of his short-lived marriage in 1816, Byron left England amid rumours of infidelity, sodomy, and incest.
In self-imposed exile in Italy Byron completed Childe Harold and Don Juan. He also took a great interest in Armenian culture, writing of the oppression of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule; and in 1823, he aided Greece in its quest for independence from Turkey by fitting out the Greek navy at his own expense.
Two centuries of references to, and depictions of Byron in literature, music, and film began even before his death in 1824.
More by Lord Byron
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →