The Vampyre

And Other Writings

John William Polidori, Franklin Bishop

• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784101305
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A fascinating but shadowy figure of Romanticism, John Polidori was the sensitive but fierce writer behind one of literature's most notorious characters—the vampyre. This short story reveals the seductive figure of evil, who continues to exert a powerful influence over popular culture and who cemented Polidori's status within the Gothic tradition. This collection also makes available many of Polidori's lesser-known and hard-to-find works, including a medical thesis on nightmares, an essay on the source of pleasures, poetry and personal diaries, and the novel Modern Oedipus. These works combine to help illuminate and deepen the reader's understanding of Romanticism and the Gothic.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Further Reading
• The Vampyre: A Tale
• from A Medical Inaugural Dissertation which deals with the disease called Oneirodynia, for the degree of Medical Doctor, Edinburgh 1815
• from On the Punishment of Death
• from An Essay Upon the Source of Positive Pleasure
• Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Oedipus. A Tale
• from Ximenes, The Wreath and Other Poems
• from The Fall of the Angels: A Sacred Poem
• from The Diary of Dr John William Polidori
• from Letters of John Polidori
• Appendix: Four Letters about Polidori