Władysław Reymont, Wampir: a novel, Publishers Weekly Illustrated, Warsaw [1931], p. 304, dimensions 12.5 x 19 cm. Writings: a complete collective edition with an introduction by Zdzisław Dębicki / Władysław St. Reymont vol. 22. Half leather made in the workshop of Suszek Books. The edges of the pages stained.
Modernist horror novel by Wladyslaw Reymont. The work was created in stages, over the course of several years. In the pages of the Warsaw Courier in 1904, in issues 2 through 76, appeared the novel We mists, the title of which referred to the space of the city, as Reymont paid much attention to the atmosphere of London - the moloch in which the action takes place. Later the author added additional chapters, which together formed the work The Vampire, published in 1911.
In nineteenth-century Breslau there was a thriving community of spiritualists, and the young Reymont, as a "medium", evoked spirits with them. It was here that a local fortune teller predicted big money and the Nobel Prize for the writer. Biographers of the writer believe that the Wroclaw experience and interest in spiritualism and the occult became one of the inspirations for Reymont to write the horror novel The Vampire.
Together with the well-known homœopathic physician Jozef Drzewiecki, a promoter of hypnotism, in July 1894, the future Nobel laureate traveled to London for the Theosophical Society's Convention. During the meeting of theosophists, Reymont had the opportunity to observe the achievements of the continuators of the ideas of the famous Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and author of Isis Unveiled. These events were the main source of reflections and insights later used in writing his horror novel, entitled The Vampire.