LADY CAROLINE LAMB AND LORD BYRON: GLENARVON - A VAMPIRE OR A WANDERING JEW

Abstract

This paper focuses on an obscure work, produced during the Romantic period in England by Lady Caroline Lamb, a novelist from aristocratic descent. Her novel titled Glenarvon, generally dismissed by critics, but considered by Goethe a work worthy for literary consideration, was actually a great financial success, presumably because of its semi-autobiographical frame of the affair she had with Lord Gordon Byron, who was already transforming into a celebrity. Despite the little attention this novel has received, this paper presents it as a Gothic novel which depicts the first Byronic hero outside Byron’s opus and successfully blends traits of two archetypal literary characters- the Wandering Jew and the vampire.