The Vampyre: A Bedside Companion

Contains

Canonical title

The Vampyre: A Bedside Companion

Epigraph

May 28—Went to Geneva . Introduced to a room where about 8; 2 ladies. Lord Byron's name was alone mentioned; mine, like a star in the halo of the moon, invisible. . . .'

Polidori's Diary

Dedication

For Dr John William Polidori,
who came too close to great men

First words

The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole's quaint attempt to transfer his taste for Gothick bric-a-brac into prose, began with a dream: "I waked one morning, in the beginning of last June (1764) from a dream, of which all... (show all) I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle . . . and that on the upper-most banister of a great staircaise I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down to write. . . ."

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The main differences are that hate and guilt play a far larger part in the vampire than in the Incubus belief, where the emotions are almost purely those of desire and fear.