"Fragment of Novel" is an unfinished 1819 vampire horror story written by Lord Byron. The story, also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial: A Fragment", was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme. The main character was Augustus Darvell. John William Polidori based his novella The Vampyre (1819), originally attributed in print to Lord Byron, on the Byron fragment. The vampire in the Polidori story, Lord Ruthven, was modelled on Byron himself. The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in the summer of 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley where a "ghost writing" contest was proposed.[1] This contest was also what led to the creation of Frankenstein according to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1818 Preface to the novel. The story is important in the development and evolution of the vampire story in English literature as one of the first to feature the modern vampire as able to function in society in disguise.[2] The short story first appeared under the title "A Fragment" in the 1819 collection Mazeppa: A Poem, published by John Murray in London.
- ^ The Preface to the 1818 edition of Frankenstein written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley stated that three participated in the ghost writing contest. Mary Shelley stated that four participated in the contest in the 1831 Introduction, adding herself to the contest and leaving out Claire Clairmont.
- ^ Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press, 1988, p. 194. "Byron's Darvell and Polidori's Ruthven are, as far as I know, the first vampires who re-create their desires by ignoring their genealogical and emotional origins: their mobility is psychic as well as geographical."