'The Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman' is an horrific account of Irish terrorism, Charlotte Gore's 'The Red Man' features a good story and an even more interesting frame, and Le Fanu's 'A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess' is an interesting first draft of his 'Uncle Silas' published twenty-six years before the celebrated novel. Edward Bulwer's 'Monos and Daimonos' (1830) is distinguished by a narrative voice that inevitably reminds one of Poe and surely must have influenced him. Most of the other stories are worth at least one reading and will give you a very good idea of the dark sensational fiction characteristic of the Regency. (The anthology also includes Henry Colborn's original introduction from the 'New Monthly Magazine,' the anonymous letter accompanying the manuscript on its first publication, a note by Polidori on authorship, and Byron's original fragmentary tale). It was Polidori who added sex, class and elegance to the vampire, forever putting his mark upon the legend. John Polidori, a tale that turned the vampire into a 19th craze by transforming the rather shabby peasant Eastern European folkloric figure into the libertine image of Lord B. The most influential piece here, of course, is 'The Vampyre,' originally thought to be Byron's but actually written by Byron's personal physician and cast-off middle-class toady Dr. This is a companion volume to Tales from Blackwood's Magazine, containing early 19th century stories of grisly happenings and extreme psychological states culled from British magazines other than Blackwood's. JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU - Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Contess JAMES HOGG - Some Terrible Letters from ScotlandĬHARLES LEVER - Post-Mortem Recollections of a Medical Lecturer WILLIAM CARLETON - Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman

The introduction surveys the genesis and influence of The Vampyre and its central themes and techniques, while the Appendices contain material closely associated with its composition and publication, including Lord Byron's prose fragment Augustus Darvell. LeFanu, Letitia Landon, Edward Bulwer, and William Carelton. The present volume selects thirteen other tales of mystery and the macabre, including the works of James Hogg, J.S. John Polidori's classic tale The Vampyre (1819), was a product of the same ghost-story competition that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Polidori the vampyre