Everything about John William Polidori totally explained
John William Polidori (
7 September 1795 –
24 August 1821) was an
Italian 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.
Polidori was the oldest son of
Gaetano Polidori, an
Italian political
émigré scholar, and Anna Maria Pierce, a governess. He had three brothers and four sisters.
He was one of the earliest pupils at recently established
Ampleforth College from
1804, 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.
In
1816 Dr. Polidori entered
Lord Byron's service as his personal physician, and accompanied Byron on a trip through Europe. At the
Villa Diodati, a house Byron rented by
Lake Geneva in
Switzerland, the pair met with
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her husband-to-be,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their companion (Mary's stepsister)
Claire Clairmont.
One night in June, after the company had read aloud from the
Tales of the Dead, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into
Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale, The Vampyre, the first vampire story published in English.
Rather than use the crude, bestial
vampire of
folklore as a basis for his story, Polidori based his character on Byron. Polidori named the character "
Lord Ruthven" as a joke. The name was originally used in
Lady Caroline Lamb's novel
Glenarvon, in which a thinly-disguised Byron figure was also named Lord Ruthven.
Polidori's Lord Ruthven wasn't only the first vampire in English fiction, but was also the first fictional vampire in the form we recognize today—an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society.
Dismissed by Byron, Polidori travelled in Italy and then returned to
England. His story, "
The Vampyre", was published in the April 1819 issue of
New Monthly Magazine without his permission. Whilst in London he lived and died in Great Pulteney Street (Soho). Much to both his and Byron's chagrin, "The Vampyre" was released as a new work by Byron. Byron even released his own
Fragment of a Novel in an attempt to clear up the mess, but, for better or worse, "The Vampyre" continued to be attributed to him.
His long, Byron-influenced theological poem
The Fall of the Angels, was published anonymously in 1821.
He died in 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.
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 sister Charlotte made a transcription of his Diaries, but censored "peccant passages" and destroyed the original. Based only on the transcription,
The Diary of John Polidori was edited by
William Michael Rossetti and first published in 1911 by
Elkin Mathews (London). A reprint of this book,
The diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, relating to Byron, Shelley, etc was published by Folcroft Library Editions (Folcroft, Pa.) in 1975. Another reprint by the same title was printed by Norwood Editions (Norwood, Pa.) in 1978.
A number of films have depicted John Polidori and the genesis of the
Frankenstein and "Vampyre" stories in 1816:
Gothic directed by
Ken Russell (1986),
Haunted Summer directed by
Ivan Passer (1988) and
Remando al viento (English title:
Rowing with the Wind) directed by
Gonzalo Suárez (1988). He also appears as a minor and unsympathetic character in the
Tim Powers horror novel
The Stress of Her Regard (1989), in which Polidori doesn't write about vampires but becomes directly involved with them. His name was also used for a character in a television movie adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel: directed by
Jack Smight (1973). Dr. John Polidori was the protagonist of "The Post-Modern Prometheus," an X-Files episode from the fifth season; he was portrayed by John O'Hurley.
Paul West's novel "Lord Byron's Doctor" (1989) is a recreation, and ribald fictionalization, of Polidori's diaries. West memorably depicts him as a literary groupie whose attempts to emulate Byron eventually unhinge and destroy him.
Polidori is a central character in the novel
Gothic Romance (or
Bravoure in the original French edition) by
Emmanuel Carrère which, amongst other things, presents a fictionalised account of the events of 1816. Polidori is also the 'hero' of the novel
Imposture (2007) by
Benjamin Markovits.
Sources
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