Well, the Romantic era poet was like a rock star in his time. Not only talented and handsome, but with the added allure of being an aristocrat. Such was his fame and charisma that grown women would faint when he walked into a room. His poetry was read and admired around the world – with much of what he wrote containing anecdotes that echoed real events occurring in his life.
It was a scandalous life, with a disaster of a marriage, and adulterous affairs, including one with his half-sister. He owed such vast amounts of money that he could well have been arrested and locked up in debtors’ prison. And then, there were liaisons involving other men that, in his time, were deemed illegal and could lead to execution. It was really little wonder that Lord Byron’s fortunes waned, and he was forced to flee his homeland and live in Europe as an exile.
Over the course of three years when he settled in Venice he enjoyed yet more affairs; with prostitutes, and married women, and finally the young countess who went on to steal the poet’s heart … but not before he’d grown exhausted by the debauched and drunken nights he’d spent enjoying Carnivale, and the whispering campaign to further damn his reputation when a novella called The Vampyre, was fraudulently printed with his name upon the cover.
This novella was the spark to fire my imagination. I’ve always loved a vampire theme and, in my youth, I was obsessed with the work of Anne Rice, with its rich historical settings in which vampires existed in the world of mortal men. I’ve read the work of Le Fanu, with his feverish and lesbian-themed story of Carmilla. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is also a favourite in the genre – especially the book’s construction, using letters and diaries, even ships’ logs, telegrams and newspaper reports – a style I often use myself. And I’d also read The Vampyre, but when the novel was eventually published with the name of its true author: Doctor John Polidori.
Polidori was employed by Byron for a time as his private physician – until their friendship soured, after which Polidori composed a story about a mysterious aristocrat by the name of Lord Ruthven, who frequents the London salons and seduces young women before they’re wickedly discarded. Ruthven then travels abroad with a companion called Aubrey, who learns the truth of Ruthven’s nature when they’re in Greece and a young girl is attacked and left to die with savage wounds to her throat. After this, Ruthven is injured by some bandits on a roadside. When he appears to be dying, he asks Aubrey to promise not to mention his name for a year and a day. Aubrey keeps this strange promise, and then travels back to London where he is shocked to find Lord Ruthven very much still alive, and also married to his sister … a sister Aubrey cannot save for by then she is dead, her fate having been to glut ‘the thirst of a Vampyre! ‘
In reality, Lord Byron was incensed to think that a novel he considered to be of no merit had been published in his name. In my fiction, I have taken the seeds of this event and embellished them to write a murder mystery set in the glorious and gothic city of Venice, with its crumbling damp palazzos, brothels, and literary salons, even a hospital morgue, and an island monastery. Within this shadowy world of intrigues and decadence, some of the women Byron knows are found with wounds to their throats, much like the victim in The Vampyre. It isn’t long before a whispering campaign is being spread to claim that the novel is no more than a brazen confession of the most demonic crimes.
Can Lord Byron clear his name, and is he telling the truth when he protests his innocence? I hope the conjuring up of his spirit on my pages might beguile you to find out in the pages of Dangerous, out this week in paperback.
Essie Fox is the author of Dangerous: A Lord Byron Mystery, published in paperback by Orenda Books on 9th April 2026.
