Lord Byron in popular culture from characterisations of Byron. The image of a vampire portrayed as an aristocrat was created by John William Polidori in "The Vampyre", during the summer of 1816 which he spent in the company of Byron. The titled Count Dracula is a reprise of this character. Tom Holland, in his 1995 novel "The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron", romantically describes how Lord Byron became a vampire during his first visit to Greece — a fictional transformation that explains much of his subsequent behaviour towards family and friends, and finds support in quotes from Byron poems
Lord Byron her. The offer was not accepted. Byron made his way to Smyrna, where he and Hobhouse cadged a ride to Constantinople on HMS "Salsette". While "Salsette" was anchored awaiting Ottoman permission to dock at the city, on 3 May 1810 Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, of "Salsette"s Marines, swam the Hellespont. Byron commemorated this feat in the second canto of "Don Juan". He returned to England from Malta in July 1811 aboard . Byron became a celebrity with the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812). "He rapidly became the most brilliant star in the dazzling world