Narrator's Note: What chance does young, overly romantic idealism have when its infatuation is the very embodiment of evil?   A nugget about John William Polidori. Stoker wasn't the first to drop a remix on vampires. 78 years before Dracula, John William Polidori published The Vampyre in 1819 -- born out of a challenge to write ghost stories by his social circle, namely, Lord Byron, and Percy & Mary Shelley. The Vampyre was wrongly credited to Lord Byron at the time of publication, much to the dismay of Byron and Polidori. Byron later finished and published his own vampire story ("Fragment of a Novel") to rectify the false accreditation. Though it should be mentioned that Polidori took inspiration from the vampire story that Byron discarded earlier.   Another nugget: Polidori was also Byron's personal physician.   ---   Let us not forget the stories and poems of writing innovator's like John William Polidori. Look for his works wherever great works are available.