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 and the Blessingtons. Lady Blessington based much of the material in her book, "Conversations with Lord Byron", on the time spent together there. This book became an important biographical text about Byron’s life just prior to his death. Byron was living in Genoa when, in 1823, while growing bored with his life there, he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. At first, Byron did not wish to leave his twenty-two-year-old mistress Countess Teresa Guiccioli who had abandoned her husband to live with him; ultimately Guiccioli's father, Count Gamba was