Polidori's work had an immense impact on contemporary sensibilities and ran through numerous editions and translations. Jan Čapek argued that:
"Whether Polidori wrote 'The Vampyre' out of spite toward Byron or not, whether he is guilty of a measure of plagiarism, or whether he even intended to have the story published or not, the tale energizes a series of figurations of the vampire in what is now over two centuries long tradition of vampire prose fiction. No matter the mysterious occasions or the undisclosed motivations or intentions, Polidori’s 'The Vampyre' must be judged by its shaping of vampire fiction, giving it a true start which would capture the Victorian period as much as the vampire panic captured the Enlightened period and as much as it would later capture much of the twentieth century without the interest waning in the early decades of the twenty-first century. [...] John William Polidori unleashes the figure of the vampire, in all its aristocratic and privileged, rhetorically powerful and seductive, sexually potent and corruptive and, in any case, cunning and elusive power."[12]
That influence has extended into the current era as the text is seen as "canonical" and – together with Bram Stoker's Dracula and others – is "often even cited as almost folkloric sources on vampirism".[2] An adaptation appeared in 1820 with Cyprien Bérard's novel Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires, falsely attributed to Charles Nodier, who himself then wrote his own dramatic version, Le Vampire, a play which had enormous success and sparked a "vampire craze" across Europe. This includes operatic adaptations by Heinrich Marschner (see Der Vampyr) and Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (see Der Vampyr), both published in the same year. Nikolai Gogol, Alexandre Dumas and Aleksey Tolstoy all produced vampire tales, and themes in Polidori's tale would continue to influence Bram Stoker's Dracula and eventually the whole vampire genre. Dumas makes explicit reference to Lord Ruthven in The Count of Monte Cristo, going so far as to state that his character "The Comtesse G..." had been personally acquainted with Lord Ruthven.[13]
In 1819, The Black Vampyre, an American novella by Uriah D'Arcy, was published, taking advantage of The Vampyre's popularity.[14]
