Showing results by author "John William Polidori" in All Categories

Ten classic books for your listening pleasure.

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In 1816, Dr Polidori was given the job of Byron’s personal physician and accompanied him on a trip through Europe. At the Villa Diodati, Byron’s rented villa at Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Claire Clairmont. One night in June, Byron suggested they each write a ghost story. There were to be two outstanding works from that evening: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’, which would be the first published modern vampire story in English. 

The story begins in the modern-day London party scene. Two men quickly strike up a friendship and later decide to travel across Europe together, encountering some beautiful women and wild adventures along the way. But could either one of the friends have ever predicted how this story would end? 

Aubrey, an orphaned young gentleman in possession of a large fortune, arrives in London for the season where he meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven. Aubrey befriends Lord Ruthven and upon discovering that Ruthven is planning a trip to Europe, decides to take his grand tour at the same time and travel with him. The longer Aubrey is with Ruthven the more he discovers about him. He decides to distance himself from Ruthven; but is he already too late to save all that he holds dear from the thirst of the vampire?

The superstition upon which this tale is founded is very general in the East. Among the Arabians, it appears to be common: it did not, however, extend itself to the Greeks until after the establishment of Christianity. At which time, the idea becoming prevalent that a Latin body could not corrupt if buried in their territory, it gradually increased, and formed the subject of many wonderful stories, still extant, of the dead rising from their graves and feeding upon the blood of the young and beautiful.  

Per chi ama il genere gotico, e non sa resistere alle atmosfere dark, ecco un’imperdibile proposta in versione integrale dell’audiolibro, de "Il Vampiro"...

Il primo di questi tre racconti è lo storico "Il Vampiro" con cui John William Polidori (1795-1821) inaugurò le vicende letterarie di questa creatura dell’orrore. Lo scrittore era anche il segretario e medico personale del poeta George Byron, a cui si fa più volte riferimento, nel racconto, alttribuendone a lui la paternità, secondo una non insolita finzione letteraria.