Page from first edition of "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori.

Molly Miller is a graduate student in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. She is studying to become a teen services librarian, but has many other interests, including nineteenth-century British literature, vampires, rare books, and anything to do with the Victorian Era.  As part of a research project in Michael Laird’s class “Studies in the Book Arts,” Miller studied a first edition of John William Polidori’s The Vampyre.

Vampires have inspired human imagination for centuries. They even play a huge role in popular culture today, and vampire mythology has been explored in literature, movies, and many other forms of media. While big names such as Bram Stoker’s…