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The Vampyre

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69-417: " The Vampyre " is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori , taken from the story told by Lord Byron as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley , Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley . The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus . "The Vampyre" is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction . The work

138-792: A "vampire craze" across Europe. This includes operatic adaptations by Heinrich Marschner (see Der Vampyr ) and Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (see Der Vampyr ), both published in the same year. Nikolai Gogol , Alexandre Dumas and Aleksey Tolstoy all produced vampire tales, and themes in Polidori's tale would continue to influence Bram Stoker 's Dracula and eventually the whole vampire genre. Dumas makes explicit reference to Lord Ruthven in The Count of Monte Cristo , going so far as to state that his character "The Comtesse G..." had been personally acquainted with Lord Ruthven. In 1819, The Black Vampyre , an American novella by Uriah D'Arcy,

207-583: A Summer 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1 °F). Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000, resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere . Evidence suggests that the anomaly

276-420: A Virginia newspaper reported that corn crops would be one half to two-thirds short and lamented that "the cold as well as the drought has nipt the buds of hope". A Norfolk, Virginia , newspaper reported: It is now the middle of July, and we have not yet had what could properly be called summer. Easterly winds have prevailed for nearly three months past ... the sun during that time has generally been obscured and

345-405: A character called Sir Ruthven must abduct a maiden, or he will die. In 1988, American playwright Tim Kelly created a drawing room adaptation of The Vampyre for the stage, popular among community theatres and high school drama clubs. John William Polidori John William Polidori (7 September 1795 – 24 August 1821) was a British writer and physician. He is known for his associations with

414-402: A decisive factor, Jan Čapek warns against a "Byromaniacal" reading of the tale, arguing that "such an infection of the discussion about Polidori with the germ of Byron’s controversial persona is somewhat paradoxical, considering that the resulting debate oscillates somewhere between a sense that Polidori’s conception itself reflects his own sense of the debilitating domination of Byron’s genius and

483-526: A decrease in population of between 10,000 and 15,000 in 1816 and 1817, erasing seven previous years of population growth. Among those who left Vermont were the family of Joseph Smith , who moved from Norwich, Vermont , to Palmyra, New York . This move precipitated the series of events that culminated in Smith founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . In June 1816, "incessant rainfall" during

552-462: A lake. Despite engineer Ignaz Venetz 's efforts to drain the growing lake, the ice dam collapsed catastrophically in June 1818, killing forty people in the resulting flood. In the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent "dry fog" was observed in parts of the eastern United States. The fog reddened and dimmed sunlight such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed

621-469: A more hospitable climate, richer soil, and better growing conditions. Indiana became a state in December 1816, and Illinois did two years later. British historian Lawrence Goldman has suggested that migration into the burned-over district of upstate New York was responsible for centering the abolitionist movement in that region. According to historian L. D. Stillwell, Vermont alone experienced

690-406: A precursor to Dracula . These days inside Villa Diodati, remembered fondly by Mary Shelley, were occupied by opium use and intellectual conversations. After listening intently to one of these conversations, she awoke with the image of Victor Frankenstein kneeling over his monstrous creation, and thus was inspired to write Frankenstein . Lord Byron was inspired to write the poem " Darkness " by

759-420: A sense that Polidori attempted to take control in defence against such domination and wrote the tale in an attempt to satirize the effects of Byron’s proximity and to assert his own worth." Polidori's work had an immense impact on contemporary sensibilities and ran through numerous editions and translations. Jan Čapek argued that: "Whether Polidori wrote 'The Vampyre' out of spite toward Byron or not, whether he

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828-439: A sheath which matches the dagger found by Ianthe's body. Aubrey returns to London and is amazed when Ruthven appears shortly thereafter, alive and well. Ruthven reminds Aubrey of his oath and although Aubrey wants to warn others of Ruthven's character he feels unable to break his oath. Helpless to protect his sister from Ruthven, Aubrey has a nervous breakdown. Upon recovering, Aubrey learns that Ruthven has inherited an earldom and

897-463: A single day when "the fowls all went to roost at noon and candles had to be lit as at midnight". The imagery in the poem is starkly similar to the conditions of the Year Without a Summer: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in

966-513: A tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein . Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, " A Fragment ", featuring the main character Augustus Darvell, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale, " The Vampyre ", the first published modern vampire story in English. Polidori's conversation with Percy Bysshe Shelley on 15 June 1816, as recounted in The Diary ,

1035-524: A temporary drop in the Earth's average land temperature of about one degree Celsius; smaller temperature drops were recorded from the 1812–1814 eruptions. The Earth had already been in a centuries-long period of cooling that began in the 14th century. Known today as the Little Ice Age , it had already caused considerable agricultural distress in Europe. The eruption of Tambora occurred near the end of

1104-556: A trip through Europe. Publisher John Murray offered Polidori 500 English pounds to keep a diary of their travels, which Polidori's nephew William Michael Rossetti later edited. At the Villa Diodati , a house Byron rented by Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin , her husband-to-be, Percy Bysshe Shelley , and their companion (Mary's stepsister) Claire Clairmont . One night in June after

1173-631: A true start which would capture the Victorian period as much as the vampire panic captured the Enlightened period and as much as it would later capture much of the twentieth century without the interest waning in the early decades of the twenty-first century. [...] John William Polidori unleashes the figure of the vampire, in all its aristocratic and privileged, rhetorically powerful and seductive, sexually potent and corruptive and, in any case, cunning and elusive power." That influence has extended into

1242-459: Is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre." Aubrey meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven at a social event when he comes to London. After briefly getting to know Ruthven, Aubrey agrees to go travelling around Europe with him. Aubrey slowly realizes that Ruthven delights in causing the ruin and degradation of others, and after Ruthven attempts to seduce

1311-492: Is engaged to his sister, and they are due to be married on the day that his oath will end. Unable to delay the wedding, Aubrey has a stroke. That night, his oath expires, and Aubrey relates the entire story before dying. But it is too late: Ruthven has disappeared, leaving his new wife dead and drained of blood. "The Vampyre" was first published on 1 April 1819 by Henry Colburn in the New Monthly Magazine with

1380-632: Is frozen in the late eighteenth century but revives in modern times and becomes a successful businessman. In England, James Planché 's play The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles was first performed in London in 1820 at the Lyceum Theatre based on Charles Nodier 's Le Vampire , which in turn was based on Polidori. Such melodramas were satirised in Ruddigore , by Gilbert and Sullivan (1887),

1449-400: Is guilty of a measure of plagiarism, or whether he even intended to have the story published or not, the tale energizes a series of figurations of the vampire in what is now over two centuries long tradition of vampire prose fiction. No matter the mysterious occasions or the undisclosed motivations or intentions, Polidori’s 'The Vampyre' must be judged by its shaping of vampire fiction, giving it

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1518-453: Is regarded as the origin or genesis of Frankenstein . They discussed "the nature of the principle of life": "June 15 - ... Shelley etc. came in the evening ... Afterwards, Shelley and I had a conversation about principles — whether man was to be thought merely an instrument." Dismissed by Byron, Polidori travelled in Italy and then returned to England. His story, "The Vampyre", which featured

1587-538: The Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story " The Vampyre " (1819), the first published modern vampire story . Although the story was at first erroneously credited to Lord Byron , both Byron and Polidori affirmed that the author was Polidori. John William Polidori was born on 7 September 1795 in Westminster ,

1656-781: The Sahel region have been found, though conditions from surrounding areas have implied above-normal rainfall. Below the Sahel, the coastal regions of West Africa likely experienced below-normal levels of precipitation. Severe storms affected the South African coast during the Southern Hemisphere winter. On July 29–30, 1816, a violent storm occurred near Cape Town , which brought forceful northerly winds and hail and caused severe damage to shipping. The monsoon season in China

1725-497: The eastern United States , a persistent "dry fog" dimmed the sunlight, causing unusual cold and frost throughout the summer months. Crops failed in regions like New England , leading to food shortages and economic distress. These conditions forced many families to leave their homes in search of better farming opportunities, contributing to Westward expansion . The Year Without a Summer was an agricultural disaster; historian John D. Post called it "the last great subsistence crisis in

1794-449: The "fog", retrospectively characterized by Clive Oppenheimer as a "stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil". The weather was not in itself a hardship for those accustomed to long winters. Hardship came from the weather's effect on crops and thus on the supply of food and firewood. The consequences were felt most strongly at higher elevations, where farming was already difficult even in good years. In May 1816, frost killed off most crops in

1863-496: The "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley , Percy Bysshe Shelley , Lord Byron , John William Polidori , and their friends to stay indoors at Villa Diodati for much of their Swiss holiday. Inspired by a collection of German ghost stories that they had read, Lord Byron proposed a contest to see who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein and Lord Byron to write " A Fragment ", which Polidori later used as inspiration for The Vampyre –

1932-465: The 1945 film The Vampire's Ghost starring John Abbott as the Lord Ruthven character "Webb Fallon", with the setting changed from England and Greece to Africa. Also, The Vampyr: A Soap Opera , based on the opera Der Vampyr by Heinrich Marschner and the Polidori story, was filmed and broadcast on BBC 2 on December 2, 1992, with the Lord Ruthven character's name changed to "Ripley", who

2001-456: The Angels was published anonymously in 1821. Polidori died at his father's London house on 24 August 1821, weighed down by depression and gambling debts. Despite conjecture from his family that he died by suicide by means of prussic acid , the coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes. His sister Charlotte transcribed Polidori's diaries, but censored "peccant passages" and destroyed

2070-601: The German inventor Karl Drais to research new ways of horseless transportation, which led to the invention of the draisine and velocipede , a precursor of the bicycle . The crop failures of the "Year without a Summer" may have shaped the settlement of the Midwestern United States , as many thousands of people left New England for western New York and the Northwest Territory in search of

2139-634: The Little Ice Age, exacerbating the background global cooling of the period. This period also occurred during the Dalton Minimum , a period of relatively low solar activity from 1790 to 1830. May 1816 had the lowest Wolf number (0.1) to date since records on solar activity began. It is not yet known, however, if and how changes in solar activity affect Earth's climate, and this correlation does not prove that lower solar activity produces global cooling. No direct evidence for conditions in

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2208-596: The Philippines. The significant amount of volcanic ash and gases released into the atmosphere blocked sunlight, leading to global cooling. Countries such as Great Britain, Ireland, and France experienced significant hardship, with food riots and famine becoming common. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Europe was still recovering from the Napoleonic Wars , adding to the socio-economic stress. North America also faced extreme weather conditions. In

2277-567: The United States to fetch flour, and what had tended to increase this distress was the interruption of the coasting trade through the dread of war with Buenos Ayres . High levels of tephra in the atmosphere caused a haze to hang over the sky for several years after the eruption, and created rich red hues in sunsets. Paintings during the years before and after seem to confirm that these striking reds were not present before Mount Tambora's eruption, and depict moodier, darker scenes, even in

2346-572: The Western world". The climatic aberrations of 1816 had their greatest effect on New England , Atlantic Canada , and Western Europe . The main cause of the Year Without a Summer is generally held to be a volcanic winter created by the April 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa . The eruption had a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) ranking of 7, and ejected at least 37 km (8.9 cu mi) of dense-rock equivalent material into

2415-498: The atmosphere led to spectacular sunsets during this period, as depicted in the paintings of J. M. W. Turner , and may have given rise to the yellow tinge predominant in his paintings such as Chichester Canal (1828). Similar phenomena were observed after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa , and on the West Coast of the United States following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo . The lack of oats to feed horses may have inspired

2484-416: The atmosphere. It remains the most recent confirmed VEI-7 eruption to date. Other large volcanic eruptions (of at least VEI-4) around this time include: These eruptions had built up a substantial amount of atmospheric dust, and thus temperatures fell worldwide as the airborne material blocked sunlight in the stratosphere . According to a 2012 analysis by Berkeley Earth , the 1815 Tambora eruption caused

2553-464: The author was given as Lord Byron on the title page. After Polidori protested, later printings removed Byron's name from the title page but did not replace it with Polidori's. The story was an immediate popular success, partly because of the Byron attribution and partly because it exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public. Polidori transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into

2622-570: The coldest July on record. Widespread flooding of Europe's major rivers is attributed to the event, as is frost in August. Hungary experienced snowfall colored brown by volcanic ash; in northern Italy, red snow fell throughout the year. In western Switzerland , the summers of 1816 and 1817 were so cold that an ice dam formed below a tongue of the Giétro Glacier in the Val de Bagnes , creating

2691-513: The company had read aloud from Fantasmagoriana , a French collection of German horror tales, Byron suggested they each write a ghost story. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "A Fragment of a Ghost Story" and wrote down five ghost stories recounted by Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis , published posthumously as the Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on Return to England, 1816 , the journal entries beginning on 18 August 1816. Mary Shelley worked on

2760-494: The continent since the French Revolution . Between 1816 and 1819, major typhus epidemics occurred in parts of Europe, including Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, and Scotland, precipitated by the famine. More than 65,000 people died as the disease spread out of Ireland. The long-running Central England temperature record reported the eleventh coldest year on record since 1659, as well as the third coldest summer and

2829-425: The current era as the text is seen as "canonical" and – together with Bram Stoker 's Dracula and others – is "often even cited as almost folkloric sources on vampirism". An adaptation appeared in 1820 with Cyprien Bérard's novel Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires , falsely attributed to Charles Nodier , who himself then wrote his own dramatic version, Le Vampire , a play which had enormous success and sparked

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2898-491: The daughter of a mutual acquaintance near Rome, Aubrey leaves in disgust. Alone, Aubrey travels to Greece where he falls in love with an innkeeper's daughter, Ianthe. She tells him about the legends of the vampire, which are very popular in the area, and Aubrey recognises that Ruthven fits the physical description. This romance is short-lived: Ianthe is killed, her throat torn open by an attacker who injures Aubrey and leaves behind an unusual dagger. The whole town believes it to be

2967-413: The day. Icicles 12 inches long in the shade of noon day." After a lull, by August 17, Holyoke noted an abrupt change from summer to winter by August 21, when a meager bean and corn crop were killed. "The fields," he wrote, "were as empty and white as October." The Berkshires saw frost again on August 23, as did much of New England and upstate New York. Massachusetts historian William G. Atkins summed up

3036-475: The disaster: Severe frosts occurred every month; June 7th and 8th snow fell, and it was so cold that crops were cut down, even freezing the roots ... In the early Autumn when corn was in the milk [the endosperm inside the kernel was still liquid] it was so thoroughly frozen that it never ripened and was scarcely worth harvesting. Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high and the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food. It must be remembered that

3105-504: The eldest son of Gaetano Polidori , an Italian political émigré scholar, and his wife Anna Maria Pierce, an English governess. He had three brothers and four sisters. His sister Frances Polidori married the exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti , and thus Polidori, posthumously, became the uncle of Maria Francesca Rossetti , Dante Gabriel Rossetti , William Michael Rossetti , and Christina Georgina Rossetti . William Michael Rossetti published Polidori's journal in 1911. Polidori

3174-483: The false attribution "A Tale by Lord Byron ". The name of the work's protagonist, " Lord Ruthven ", added to this assumption, for that name was originally used in Lady Caroline Lamb 's novel Glenarvon (from the same publisher), in which a thinly-disguised Byron figure was named Clarence de Ruthven, Earl of Glenarvon. Despite repeated denials by Byron and Polidori, the authorship often went unclarified. In

3243-606: The five turned to telling fantastical tales, and then writing their own. Fueled by ghost stories such as the Fantasmagoriana , William Beckford 's Vathek , and quantities of laudanum , Mary Shelley produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus . Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, " Fragment of a Novel " (1816), also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", and in "two or three idle mornings" produced "The Vampyre". While most scholars pursue Polidori's proximity to Byron as

3312-432: The following issue, dated May 1, 1819, Polidori wrote a letter to the editor explaining "that though the groundwork is certainly Lord Byron's, its development is mine". The tale was first published in book form by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones in London, Paternoster-Row, in 1819 in octavo as The Vampyre; A Tale in 84 pages. The notation on the cover noted that it was: "Entered at Stationers' Hall, March 27, 1819". Initially,

3381-495: The form that is recognized today—an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society. Due to this influential aspect, Jan Čapek argued that "Ruthven’s excesses in Polidori’s tale reveal the landscape of modern, increasingly capitalistic class society to be laden with anxiety concerning the continuing power of the aristocracy, as though untouched by the social shifts in the wake of the industrial revolution." The story has its genesis in

3450-566: The fortunes of the ruling Qing dynasty . In India , the delayed summer monsoon caused late torrential rains that aggravated the spread of cholera from a region near the Ganges in Bengal to as far as Moscow . In Bengal, abnormal cold and snow was reported in the winter monsoon. In Japan, which was still cautious after the cold-weather-related Great Tenmei famine of 1782–1788, cold damaged crops, but no crop failures were reported and there

3519-754: The granaries of the great west had not then been opened to us by railroad communication, and people were obliged to rely upon their own resources or upon others in their immediate locality. In July and August, lake and river ice was observed as far south as northwestern Pennsylvania . Frost was reported in Virginia on August 20 and 21. Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as 95 °F (35 °C) to near-freezing within hours. Thomas Jefferson , by then retired from politics to his estate at Monticello , sustained crop failures that sent him further into debt. On September 13,

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3588-526: The higher elevations of Massachusetts , New Hampshire , Vermont , and upstate New York . On June 6, snow fell in Albany, New York , and Dennysville, Maine . In Cape May, New Jersey , frost was reported five nights in a row in late June, causing extensive crop damage. Though fruit and vegetable crops survived in New England, corn was reported to have ripened so poorly that no more than a quarter of it

3657-455: The light of both the sun and the moon. Caspar David Friedrich 's The Monk by the Sea (ca. 1808–1810) and Two Men by the Sea (1817) indicate this shift of mood. A 2007 study analyzing paintings created between the years 1500 and 1900 around the times of notable volcanic events found a correlation between volcanic activity and the amount of red used in the painting. High levels of tephra in

3726-597: The main character Lord Ruthven , was published in the April 1819 issue of New Monthly Magazine without his permission. Whilst in London he lived on Great Pulteney Street in Soho . Much to both his and Byron's chagrin , "The Vampyre" was released as a new work by Byron. Byron's own vampire story "Fragment of a Novel" or "A Fragment" was published in 1819 in an attempt to clear up the confusion, but, for better or worse, "The Vampyre" continued to be attributed to him. Polidori's long, Byron-influenced theological poem The Fall of

3795-502: The original. Based only on the transcription, The Diary of John Polidori was edited by William Michael Rossetti and first published in 1911 by Elkin Mathews (London). Reprints of this book, The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. , was published by Folcroft Library Editions (Folcroft, PA ) in 1975, and by Norwood Editions (Norwood, PA) in 1978. A new edition of The Diary of John William Polidori

3864-501: The sky overcast with clouds; the air has been damp and uncomfortable, and frequently so chilling as to render the fireside a desirable retreat. Regional farmers succeeded in bringing some crops to maturity, but corn and other grain prices rose dramatically. The price of oats , for example, rose from 12¢ per bushel in 1815 to 92¢ per bushel in 1816. Crop failures were aggravated by inadequate transportation infrastructure; with few roads or navigable inland waterways and no railroads, it

3933-412: The summer of 1816, the Year Without a Summer , when Europe and parts of North America underwent a severe climate abnormality. Lord Byron and his young physician John Polidori were staying at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva and were visited by Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mary Shelley , and Claire Clairmont . Kept indoors by the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer", over three days in June

4002-527: The tropical regions of the Brazils, or that part of the country between Pernambuco and Rio Janiero . By this circumstance all the streams had been dried up, the cattle were dying or dead, and all the population emigrating to the borders of the great rivers in search of water. The greatest distress prevailed, provisions were wanting, and the mills completely at a stand. They have no windmills, so that no corn could be ground. Vessels have been sent from Pernambuco to

4071-490: The work of an evil vampire. Aubrey falls ill, but is found and nursed back to health by Ruthven. Although suspicious of the man, Aubrey feels obliged to Ruthven and rejoins him in his travels. The pair are attacked by bandits on the road and Ruthven is mortally wounded. On his deathbed, Ruthven makes Aubrey swear an oath that he will not speak of Ruthven or his death for a year and a day, and once Aubrey agrees, Lord Ruthven dies laughing. Amongst Ruthven's belongings Aubrey discovers

4140-698: Was disrupted, resulting in overwhelming floods in the Yangtze Valley . Fort Shuangcheng reported fields disrupted by frost and conscripts deserting as a result. Summer snowfall or otherwise mixed precipitation was reported in various locations in Jiangxi and Anhui . In Taiwan , snow was reported in Hsinchu and Miaoli , and frost was reported in Changhua . A large-scale famine in Yunnan helped reverse

4209-644: Was froze" and the hills were "barren like winter". Temperatures fell below freezing almost every day in May. The ground froze on June 9; on June 12, the Shakers had to replant crops destroyed by the cold. On July 7, it was so cold that all of their crops had stopped growing. Salem, Massachusetts physician Edward Holyoke—a weather observer and amateur astronomer—while in Franconia, New Hampshire, wrote on June 7, "exceedingly cold. Ground frozen hard, and squalls of snow through

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4278-508: Was no adverse effect on population. As a result of the series of volcanic eruptions in the 1810s, crops had been poor for several years; the final blow came in 1815 with the eruption of Tambora. Europe, still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars , suffered from widespread food shortages, resulting in its worst famine of the century. Low temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests in Great Britain and Ireland . Famine

4347-562: Was one of the earliest pupils at the recently established Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire from 1804. In 1810 he went up to the University of Edinburgh , where he wrote a thesis on sleepwalking and received his degree as a doctor of medicine on 1 August 1815, at the age of 19. In 1816, which became known as the Year Without a Summer , Polidori entered Lord Byron 's service as his personal physician and accompanied him on

4416-474: Was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in April in modern-day Indonesia (commonly referred to as the Dutch East Indies at the time). This eruption was the largest in at least 1,300 years (after the hypothesized eruption causing the volcanic winter of 536 ); its effect on the climate may have been exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in

4485-421: Was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oat , and potato harvests. Food prices rose sharply throughout Europe. With the cause of the problems unknown, hungry people demonstrated in front of grain markets and bakeries. Food riots took place in many European cities. Though riots were common during times of hunger, the food riots of 1816 and 1817 were the most violent period on

4554-503: Was prohibitively expensive to import food in most of the country. Maryland experienced brown, bluish, and yellow snowfall in April and May, colored by volcanic ash in the atmosphere. A newspaper account of northeastern Brazil was published in the United Kingdom: By an arrival at Liverpool we have received accounts from Pernambuco of the 8th of Feb. [1817], which state that a most uncommon drought has been experienced in

4623-552: Was published, taking advantage of The Vampyre ' s popularity. In 2016 it was announced that the studio Britannia Pictures would be releasing a feature-length adaptation of The Vampyre . Production for the film was slated to begin in late 2018, with filming taking place in the UK, Italy and Greece. The film would be directed by Rowan M. Ashe and was scheduled for release in October 2019. Earlier adaptations of Polidori's story include

4692-566: Was reprinted by Cornell University in 2009. A memorial plaque on Polidori's home at 38 Great Pulteney Street was unveiled on 15 July 1998 by the Italian Ambassador, Paolo Galli. Multiple films have depicted John Polidori, and the genesis of the Frankenstein and "Vampyre" stories in 1816: Additionally, Polidori's name was used for fictional characters in the following films: [REDACTED] Category Year Without

4761-565: Was usable for food, and much of it was moldy and not even fit for animal feed. The crop failures in New England, Canada, and parts of Europe caused food prices to rise sharply. In Canada, Quebec ran out of bread and milk, and Nova Scotians found themselves boiling foraged herbs for sustenance. Sarah Snell Bryant, of Cummington , Massachusetts , wrote in her diary: "Weather backward." At the Church Family of Shakers near New Lebanon, New York , Nicholas Bennet wrote in May 1816 that "all

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