Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was a writer and librarian who, in 1824, was appointed to the librarianship of the Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal in Paris, which became a rallying point for many of the most famous authors of the 1830s: Aloysius Bertrand, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, etc. In 1821, Nodier wrote Smarra ou les Démons de la Nuit (Smarra, or The Demons of the Night), a series of terrifying dream-based tales. In 1820, Nodier wrote the play Lord Ruthven based on the Polidori story. Smarra, too, was a fantasy saga, in which a Byronesque hero encountered fairies and vampires, perhaps the first mixture of traditional and modern fantastic elements under a single cover.   Nodier also penned popular gothic novels such as Les Proscrits (The Proscribed) (1802) and Le Peintre de Salzbourg (The Painter of Salzbourg) (1803)   stage play: Lord Ruthven the Vampire (2004)