The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by Robert Morrison

He did, eventually, actually commit suicide.

As I recall, Polidori is depicted somewhat unsympathetically as an hysterical weak character who attempts suicide. I had a brief phase of reading Gothic lit 40 yrs or so ago when I learned about it thru reading that the Surrealists liked it. The 1st time I remember running across mention of Polidori & his story 'The Vampyre' was probably in Ken Russell's 1986 film Gothic. When am I ever going to start writing those superficial capsule reviews again?! This one's 'too long', see the full thing here. John Polidori's The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabreīy tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 15, 2014 The present volume selects thirteen other tales of the macabre first published in the leading London and Dublin magazines between 18, including Edward Bulwer's chilling account of the doppelganger, LetitiaLandon's elegant reworking of the Gothic romance, William Carleton's terrifying description of an actual lynching, and James Hogg's ghoulish exploitation of the cholera epidemic of 1831-2. Polidori's tale introduced the vampire into English fiction, and launched a vampire craze that has never subsided.`The Vampyre' was first published in 1819 in the London New Monthly Magazine. Set in Italy, Greece, and London, Polidori's tales is a reaction to the dominating presence of his employer Lord Byron, and transformed the figure of the vampirefrom the bestial ghoul of earlier mythologies into the glamorous aristocrat whose violence and sexual allure make him literally a 'lady-killer'. `Upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: - to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, 'a Vampyre, a Vampyre!''John Polidori's classic tale of the vampyre was a product of the same ghost-story competition that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by Robert Morrison