2 of 7

Write now Article Tools

The first Vampire story to be penned in the English language occurred during the same fateful night that Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein. Rained in at a cabin on Lake Geneva, Byron posed a challenge to his poet chum Percy Shelley, Shelley's fiance of the time,Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), and visiting doctor, Doctor Polidori to write the scariest horror story they could muster.

Percy got frustrated and quickly gave up, preferring his simpering flowered verse to horror. Mary began the first stitches of Frankenstein and Lord Byron, as legend tells it, began a story about a vampire but quickly scrapped it. Dr. Polidori, having never written a thing in his life, saw the value in Byron's scrapped story and, according to the legend, stole up the story as his own, thus inducting the first vampire story in English "The Vampyre." But before "The Vampyre", it was actually Lord Byron who wrote the first known fully-written document of vampirism in his poem "The Giaour". Lord Byron spent much of his time in Turkey and claims the giaour to be a legend of a beast that looks like man but feeds on human blood. As we all know now, every culture has a vampire myth, so this is not surprising.

Coleridge, however, alluded to the first vampire myth in English in his never-finished poem "Christabel", written between 1797 and 1800 (long before Byron picked up his pen for "The Giaour" in 1813). "Christabel" alludes to a female vampiress who enchants another woman, Geraldine, with her vampire prowess. "Christabel" will later be credited by the Sheridan le Fanu as the foundation for his novella, "Carmilla".

In 1819, another romantic poet, John Keats wrote a poem based on an ancient Greek myth. The poem, "Lamia", tells of a woman who enters the life of an artist and he is suddenly overcome with inspiration. Unfortunately, that inspiration comes at a price as the Lamia sucks his spirit dry, leaving him dead. This is based loosely on the Greek myth of the lamia, a female similar to Lillith in Hebrew myth, who is said to have the body of a woman with her bottom-half a snake's tail. She travels through the night preying on the blood of unguarded babies. Keat's poem is much more tame in comparison.

"Varney the Vampire", a hokey, over-written look at the stock-footage image of the window B & E vampire first hits the English scene in 1842, written by the very under-knwon James Malcolm Rymer. The short story is particularly gorey for

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about A complete list of Vampire books and descriptions?
We want to hear your view. Write now!