Lot 40
[Polidori, John]
The Vampyre; a Tale
£5,292
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 28 September 2022 from 10:00 BST
Description
London: for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819. First edition, second Sherwood issue, 8vo, original wrappers, 84 pp., half-title, 16 + 4 pp. publisher's advertisements to rear, edges untrimmed, contemporary manuscript title in brown ink to front wrapper and similar attribution to Polidori on half-title, ownership inscription 'H. Senhouse, 1819' to inside front wrapper, loss of paper on spine, upper and lower cords partially split but holding [Viets III]
Footnote
Note: The work was first published earlier the same year by Henry Colburn, who sold the sheets to Sherwood in response to the controversy surrounding the false attribution of the work to Lord Byron. Sherwood's first issue retained the attribution on the half-title and title-page. For this second issue both leaves were reset, but the rest of the text was unchanged. Byron himself publicly disavowed the work, publishing his 'Fragment' of his own vampire story as an addendum to his poem Mazeppa, a copy of which is included with the lot (Mazeppa, A Poem, London: John Murray, 1819, first edition, 8vo, original wrappers, half-title, 72 pp., 8 pp. advertisements, ownership inscription 'H. Senhouse', damp-staining, spine cracked, held by one cord only).
Provenance: Property of an English collector.
![[Polidori, John]](https://media.app.artisio.co/media/104cbde6-0d38-43cb-9e0f-bb721ef57bcf/inventory/f20741b6-a39f-40e8-a1d7-89ad5917553c/5f6ae6da-b82d-4c57-af92-52f51e8847c5/0001_jBtsfF_original.jpg)