The Vamprye: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron [IMPORT] Horror Book Review

George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron, is one of England’s most famous ‘Romantic’ poets. He was born in 1788, the son of John Byron and Catherine Gordon, but inherited his title and property of his great-uncle in 1798. He travelled extensively throughout Europe and Asia Minor - his trips abroad included Albania, Greece and Italy - particularly when he was in trouble at home. (He piled up debts, his marriage collapsed after little over a year and caused a great deal of scandal with a series of illicit love affairs - his romantic entanglement with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, was particularly noteworthy. In fact, it is believed that Augusta’s daughter was fathered by Byron, rather than by her husband). After his marriage to Anne Milbanke failed, Byron left England in 1816. He settled in Geneva for a while - where he became friendly with Percy and Mary Shelley - before moving on to Italy. In 1824, he sailed to Greece to help in their fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. However, Byron caught and died from a fever before seeing any action.


“The Vampyre” tells Byron’s life story, though from a slightly different angle. Byron, as it turns out, never actually died and the book sees him telling his story to Rebecca Carville. He covers what he feels to be the key period of his existence, beginning with the trip to Greece where he became a vardoulacha - a vampire - and finishing with his faked death in Greece. Although the story is (obviously) embellished, Holland clearly had done his research before writing this book. It features Byron’s most notable love affairs, his friendships with John Hobhouse and the Shellys, even the feeble contribution of his rather pitiful doctor, Polidor. In all honesty, I enjoyed how Holland wove Byron’s `real’ life into the story more than the vampire angle…in fact, the thought of a vampire playing such a key role in the `creation’ of Frankenstein was something I found quite funny. All in all, a very readable story, though it won’t necessarily keep you awake at night.