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Loading... The Vampyre (1819)by John William Polidori
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Beautiful cover. Just one story. I can already tell this is a print-on-demand book (look for the little bar code on the back of the last blank page). It will usually even tell you what city, state, and exact date it was printed. I haven't had a lot of luck with p-o-ds since they are usually machine scanned and nobody ever proof reads them. They are usually rife with typos. We'll see. The back cover says, "Dodo Press specializes in the publication and distribution of rare and out-of-print books." which is code for "cheap public domain books." It even has a Dodo colophon that imitates the ubiquitous Penguin trademark. Hey, it was new and 50 cents. As I feared, fraught with typos and punctuation errors. Corpse is almost always rendered as "corse," the as "tho," commas as ">." The scanner doesn't even have an algorithm to pick the most likely candidate letter. Each page has at least two and some 5 or 6 errors. I can tell from a receipt stuck between pages that the original owner paid almost $12 for this. These p-o-d books are just not worth it unless you get them really cheap, like under a dollar, or you have recourse to nothing else. Favorite error: "...to be present tit the nuptials.." On to the story itself. Pretty dated story notable for being supposedly the first vampire story. Only story I have ever read that would benefit by being much longer, it reads at times like a synopsis. Ridiculous framing story added not by Polidori about Lord Byron being responsible for the story at the famous Shelly, Shelly, Byron meeting that was the genesis for the real Frankenstein. The names other than Byron's are all made up. For literary historical interest only. Leggi la mia recensione sul BLOG ! Vampyre by John William Polidori is a 2017 Open Road Media publication. (Originally published in 1819) I’ve been meaning to read this short story for years. Every fall when I find myself in the mood for a good scary story, I pause to consider this book, then I see the ratings and reviews, and give it a pass. This year, I decided that, because it was written even before Bram Stroker’s vampire masterpiece, I really should check it out. It is such a short story that it would take no time to read it, and then I could decide for myself if the ratings were justified or not. Honestly, I don’t see why people have judged this book so harshly. It’s subtle, for sure, and it doesn’t have much going on, as far as bloody graphics go. Still, when one thinks back to the time period the book was written in, and the many rumors that circulated about the ‘undead’, I think the atmosphere was probably unsettling to readers of that time, and it effectively captured a sinister sense of foreboding in an extremely sparse amount of time and space. I think some modern readers are so jaded and desensitized they have trouble sensing atmospheric nuance. Personally, I thought the book, short as it was, had a few chilling moments- they just weren't dripping in blood and gore... I'll skip the lecture on how an atmosphere is harder to create because I'm sure it would just fall on deaf ears. Nevertheless- The story is too brief to cover more than just the basics of vampire lore- but it does set the stage for the classic tales of the undead that came later, and it is quite apparent these later stories 'borrowed' from this tale- and as such, it deserves its place in history. Not only that, but the story is also part of the writing challenge between Bryon, Shelley and Polidori- a challenge that produced Shelley’s Frankenstein- so there is that. The story is fairly simple, not groundbreaking like Shelley's work, by any means, but certainly not as bad as everyone made it sound. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inThree Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto; Vathek; The Vampyre; and a Fragment of a Novel by Horace Walpole Storie di vampiri: da Polidori a Stoker, da Maupassant a Conan Doyle, oltre settanta autori ci accompagnano alla scoperta di una delle figure piu celebri che popolano da sempre l'immaginario orrorifico by Sebastiano Fusco Has the adaptationInspired
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Horror.
Short Stories.
HTML: The Vampyre is a short story written by John William Polidori and first published in 1819. Christopher Frayling wrote that it was "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre." The work quickly became a popular success, exploiting the public's penchant for gothic horror and transforming the mythology of the vampire from a creature of folklore to an aristocratic fiend preying on society. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.7Literature English English fiction Early 19th century 1800-37LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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(Bracketed, somewhat confusingly, by real world letters/discussion about Lord Byron, aside from referencing the gathering that led to the writing of Frankenstein, among other things.) ( )