Vampyre, A Tale

The Vampyre is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told 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 is described by Christopher Frayling as "e;the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre."e;