The Vampyre
A short story written by John William Polidori and a progenitor of all vampire fiction,
The Vampyre has its genesis in June 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," the five turned to telling fantastical stories, and then writing their own. Fueled by ghost stories such as the
Fantasmagoriana, William Beckford's
Vathek, and some quantity of laudanum, Mary Shelley produced what would become
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. At the same time, Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's and, in "two or three idle mornings," produced
The Vampyre, which was eventually published in the April 1819 edition of the New Monthly Magazine and falsely attributed to Byron. In it, Polidori transforms the vampire from an obscure figure in folklore into the form that is recognized today—an aristocratic fiend who pretends to be human as he preys among high society.
Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of BloodCommonly attributed to James Malcolm Rymer,
Varney the Vampire was published from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as "penny dreadfuls" due to their inexpensive price and their typically gruesome contents. It was published in book form in 1847. It is of epic length—the original edition runs 868 double-columned pages divided into 220 chapters. It has a distinctly suspenseful style, using vivid imagery to describe the horrifying exploits of Sir Francis Varney, the first vampire to feel guilty about what he was and what he had to do to sustain himself. Despite its inconsistencies,
Varney the Vampire is more or less a cohesive whole, utilizing many themes and conventions recognizable to modern audiences, as well as introducing many elements that would later become staples of vampire fiction, including the vampire's fangs, the puncture wounds it leaves in the necks of its victims, its hypnotic powers, and its superhuman strength.
CarmillaA Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu,
Carmilla was first published in 1872. It tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla, who would come to be known as the prototype for a legion of female, bisexual, and lesbian vampires.
Carmilla also introduced the vampire's ability to shapeshift, which was adapted from folklore. Unlike Dracula, who seemed to favor wolves and bats, Carmilla turned into a monstrous black cat. She also slept in a coffin.
DraculaThe definitive vampire novel,
Dracula was written by Irish author Bram Stoker and published in 1897. It was heavily influenced by the the vampire stories that preceded it, especially
The Vampyre and
Carmilla. In fact, in the earliest manuscript of
Dracula, dated March 8th, 1890, the castle is set in Styria, the same setting as
Carmilla. The setting was changed to Transylvania six days later. Stoker's posthumously published short story
Dracula's Guest, known as the deleted first chapter to
Dracula, shows a more obvious and intact debt to
Carmilla—both stories are told in the first person.
Dracula expands on the idea of a first person account by creating a series of journal entries and logs of different persons and creating a plausible background story for them having been compiled. Stoker also indulges the air of mystery further than Le Fanu by allowing the characters to solve the enigma of the vampire along with the reader. Although
Dracula was not the first vampire novel, it is certainly the most famous, and it is singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
These books form what I call the "Holy Tetralogy of Vampire of Vampire Literature". Without them, vampire fiction would never have become what it is today.
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