John William Polidori

John William Polidori (7 September 1795 – 24 August 1821) was an English physician and writer, known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), which was the first published modern vampire story.

Early life and education[edit | edit source]

Polidori was born in London on 7 September 1795. His father was Gaetano Polidori, an Italian political émigré scholar, and his mother was Anna Maria Pierce, a governess. He had three brothers and four sisters.

He was one of the earliest pupils at recently established Ampleforth College, and in 1810, went up to the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote a thesis on sleepwalking and received his degree as a doctor of medicine on 1 August 1815 at the age of 19.

Career[edit | edit source]

In 1816, Dr. Polidori entered Lord Byron's service as his personal physician, and accompanied Byron on a trip through Europe. Publisher John Murray offered Polidori 500 English pounds to keep a diary of their travels, which Polidori's nephew William Michael Rossetti later edited.

While at the Villa Diodati, a house Byron rented by Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Shelley, and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their companion Claire Clairmont. One night in June, after the company had read aloud from the Fantasmagoriana, a French collection of supernatural tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that became Frankenstein. Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, "Fragment of a Novel", and in "two or three idle mornings" produced "The Vampyre".

Death[edit | edit source]

Polidori died in London on 24 August 1821, weighed down by depression and gambling debts. Despite strong evidence that he committed suicide by means of prussic acid, the coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes.

Legacy[edit | edit source]

His sister Frances Polidori married exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and so John is the uncle of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, though they were born after his death.

His niece, Frances Polidori, published a collection of his works titled The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. which are currently held in the British Library.

References[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]

John William Polidori Resources
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