Alexandre Dumas's the Vampire: A Novel Based on the Drame Fantastique

9780595658275

059565827x

Dumas, an ardent admirer of stories of the supernatural, published many of his own occult tales during his illustrious literary career. One of these was The Vampire, a play first performed in 1851. Dumas penned The Vampire with Auguste Maquet, who had also collaborated with Dumas on many of his most successful romances, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. The vampire in Dumas's play is named Lord Ruthven after the most famous vampire in literature during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1819, Dr. John William Polidori wrote the first vampire tale in English literature and named its title character, Lord Ruthven. After the success of the story, Lord Ruthven's popularity spread throughout Europe and he became the subject of many plays and stories. Eventually, his notoriety diminished, and Count Dracula, another aristocratic vampire, took his place. Presented here is a novelization of Dumas's classic version of the Ruthven legend, which has never been published in English, now available for a new generation of readers to discover.