From lord to slave: Revolt and parasitism in Uriah Derick D'Arcy's The Black Vampyre

Sam George and Bill Hughes turn their attention to a little-known yet revelatory descendent of Polidori's vampyre. Uriah Derick D'Arcy [Richard Varick Dey]'s The Black Vampyre, a short novella featuring the first Black vampire in literature, was published within months of the US publication of The Vampyre. There is a whole story of literary appropriation and intertextuality here which is quite crucial to D'Arcy's text, which depicts literary production itself as vampiric. The Black Vampyre is situated in the context of slavery and the slave revolts in St Domingo (now Haiti). The text was written not long after Haiti was the first nation to abolish slavery during its revolution of 1791-1804. George and Hughes show how D'Arcy turns his satire on to contemporary society, where the members of a corrupt commercial society are now the vampires. D'Arcy very consciously plays with the theme of plagiarism that surrounded Polidori and connects it to the wider vampirism of society. The links The Black Vampyre makes between racial oppression and a vampiric, commercial society make its resurrection worthwhile.