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Picture : Fryer Library , The University of Queensland .
These bibliographic treasures connect us to different times in history .
Rare find
The library that discovered a 200-year-old vampyre .
By Conor Burke
The University of Queensland has un covered a near 200-year-old first edition of the first known vampire novel in one of its libraries , which could well have been the travel reading of Charles Sturt as he voyaged to Australia .
Vampire stories have been a mainstay of most cultures , starting out as folklore , then becoming a literary obsession from the 1800s , and in our time countless films and TV shows continue the tradition .
Strong , seductive , sexual and cursed with immortality , they hold a particular fascination in our society .
The modern vampire tale started with the very book found entirely by accident by the staff at UQ ’ s Fryer Library , The Vampyre by John William Polidori . This copy dates to 1819 , some 80 years before Bram Stoker ’ s Dracula .
Fryer librarian Simon Farley and his team were trawling their rare book section for examples of books with marginalia ( where past readers have written notes on pages ), when they stumbled upon the book .
“ We saw one of the spines of one of the books had The Vampyre in gold gilt letters , and we thought that looked interesting and took it out ,” he tells Campus Review .
“ We did a bit of research and discovered that book is the progenitor of the vampire fiction genre .
“ The person who ’ d owned the book was named Mary Anne Ricketts , and she had written her name on the front cover – but also she had written on the title page that the story was by John Polidori and the idea only was Byron ’ s . So this was a story that was , first of all , the first issue of the first edition , the story was attributed to Lord Byron .”
This is where the history of the old book gets interesting .
Polidori , a physician and poet , was part of an exclusive literary circle . According to the British Library , Polidori was personal physician to Lord Byron – the English poet , peer and playboy – and palled around with Mary Shelley and her husband Percy .
Around 1816 the group were holidaying in Switzerland , and , kept indoors by the “ incessant rain ”, the group read Fantasmagoriana , a book of ghost stories translated from its original French .
Inspired by the tales , they set up a competition to see who could come up with a ghostly tale of their own . The contest yielded Shelley ’ s Frankenstein ( The Modern Prometheus ) and also , The Vampyre .
The original idea was said to have been Byron ’ s , which was then turned into a novel by Polidori and when it was originally published , such was his fame , Byron got credit .
“ So the owner , Mary Anne Ricketts , knew that somehow , and so she ’ d written that on the page , which intrigued us . So , that ’ s really where we started to research and found the backstory to the book ,” Farley says .
How the book made its way to Australia is another mystery . Mary Anne Ricketts had connections to Crichton House , a manor house in Dorset where the future King George IV would often stay , as would Ricketts ’ cousin – Charles Sturt .
It is very possible that Sturt picked it up before he set sail for Australia in 1827 .
The find is the stuff of dreams for an avowed bibliophile .
“ It ’ s a wonderful thing to have that experience of discovering something that has something special about it ,” Farley says .
“ The digital world is with us well and truly , but that experience of the world of print culture and that kind of aura that comes from rare books , it is a different kind of experience and it ’ s beautiful to experience that .
“ And that ’ s what we try to afford the students , that experience of these bibliographic treasures that connect us to different times in history .”
And as universities continue to stray from the arts , a discovery like this shows that they can also still be places of wonder for wonder ’ s sake .
“ To think that something like this has found its way to the University of Queensland in Brisbane , Australia , is remarkable ,” Farley says .
The book ’ s pages are made from rags rather than wood-pulp and are of a high quality and very durable .
A similar edition recently sold in the UK for around $ 15,000 , but it ’ s unlikely the library would sell such a treasure , and in the short term Farley intends to showcase the work to whomever is interested .
“ We plan to do an event , but we also just welcome people to come into the Reading Room and we can show them the book and they can hold it and put on some white gloves and have that experience ,” he says .
“ It ’ s been one of the most interesting things that I ’ ve discovered while working with rare books .” ■
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