[POLIDORI (JOHN WILLIAM)] The Vampyre; A Tale, FIRST EDITION, SECOND SHERWOOD ISSUE, with the half-title and title omitting Byron's name, the original setting of the preliminary leaves (24 lines per page), variant with "almost" corrected on final line of p.36, as issued without advertisements, untrimmed in publisher's drab wrappers, spine worn with some loss, edges frayed [Viets III], 8vo, Sherwood, Neeley and Jones, 1819 THE EARLIEST OBTAINABLE ISSUE OF THE FIRST VAMPIRE BOOK IN ENGLISH LITERATURE - IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. First edition of the first vampire story in English and the first "to successfully fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre" (Christopher Frayling, Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula). The forerunner of the modern gothic genre, The Vampyre was written by the physician John Polidori, Byron's personal physician in Geneva and one of the participants in the famous story-telling competition at Villa Diodati in 1816. Polidori's story was first published in Henry Colburn's New Monthly Magazine with the subtitle "A Tale by Lord Byron", and then in book form shortly after. But Byron was swift to contest the attribution and Polidori sought an injunction against Colburn. As a result the first state, with Byron as the author, was quickly suppressed and no copies are known to exist today.