Classic Vampire Vault: Lord Ruthven

Vampires have not always been depicted as the suave, seductive and often European beings we mostly now know them to be. And contrary to popular belief, Bram Stoker didn’t come up with such an embodiment either; his version was and is the most widely circulated, but itself the fruit of earlier inspiration. Who then is the real father of Edward Cullen, Bill Compton and Damon Salvatore?

During the harsh summer of 1816 (then referred to as Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband Percy are stranded in a hotel for days by the uncommonly abominable weather, along with literary great Lord Byron and his physician John Polidori. The group quickly bonds and takes to the pastime of the hour, inventing Gothic stories over a fireplace, for almost a week spent together. Shelley comes out of the ordeal with the blueprints of a story she called The Modern Prometheus, or Frankenstein. Polidori, encouraged by his patron Lord Byron, organizes his own musings of different mythologies brought together in a short story titled The Vampyre.

Published in 1819 through England’s New Monthly Magazine (and falsely attributed to Byron), the account tells of a young traveller named Aubrey finding himself on the path of the mysterious aristocrat Lord Ruthven. Mortally wounded along their journey, the nobleman asks his young friend to keep his death –and identity- a secret for exactly a year and a day. Later returning to England, Aubrey is baffled to meet Ruthven alive and well and inserting himself in Aubrey’s entourage. Things become increasingly dire and dark as the deadline to the secret-keeping oath approaches.

Gothic horror being a hot commodity of the era, along with Lord Byron’s association, ensured instant praise and fame for story and author. The main character, considered the first to successfully fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre, would quickly inspire further stories and stage plays, all the more popular each new version of it, until Stoker and his 1897 fictionalized tale of the Wallachian Prince became the standard.

And since we live in a time of instant access to any of our heart’s desire (save for large amounts of money without required work…), you can read the original short story legally (1819…if that doesn’t qualify for public domain then John Philip Sousa needs to sue somebody quick) RIGHT HERE, courtesy of Project Guttenberg.