The Literary Gothic | John Polidori

Polidori, John

7 September 1795 - 24 August 1821

English writer and doctor (born to an Italian refugee father and an English); uncle of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti. Polidori, who earned his medical degree at the age of nineteen, served briefly as Byron's personal physician during the latter's travels in Europe after his "exile" from England. Polidori was present at the famous ghost-story sessions with Byron and the Shelleys at the Villa Diodati; the story he began there eventually became his novel Ernestus Bechtold, but first Polidori cribbed Byron's aborted plot and wrote The Vampyre, the first vampire fiction in English.

Sites:

Biographical note

[Wikipedia]

Lords Ruthven

Discussion of the historical Lords Ruthven, who have nothing to do with vampires at all, but includes brief mention of Polidori's vampire protagonist. "Ruthven," by the way, is pronounced "Riven" (like the computer game); it's a Scottish thing...

The Byronic Vampire opens in new tab/window

General discussion of Byron-Polidori contribution to the vampire in literature. [L. J. Webb, Crede Byron]

Biographical note

[Gothic Labyrinth]

Brief biographical note

[Ampleforth College]

click the cover image for more info from Amazon.com

Read a review!

John Polidori and the Vampire Byron

Overview of the Byron/Polidri relationship, the relationship of Byron's "Fragment" to Polidori's tale; some discussion of literary vampirism in general. [Bloodstone]

Brief discussion of Polidori's work and its genesis

[UnicornGarden]

The Polidori Files

Webliography

Bibliography

[FantasticFiction]

Portraits

[National Portrait Gallery, London]

Etexts:

The Vampyre [April 1819]

This novel was first published in the New Monthly Magazine in April 1819. The work was attributed to Byron at first; Polidori later claimed authorship and published a slightly revised version of the novel later. He also contacted one publisher in regards to a sequel, but that plan came to naught.

- at GoogleBooks

This is an efacsimile of one of the first book publications of Polidori's novel; there were six editions of the work, by various publishers, within the first year.

- at Lit of the Fantastic (49K)
- at ibilio.org opens in new tab/window

Polidori's novella was dramatized in 1820 by J. R. Planché as The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles, which in turn was the basis of the anonymous short story "The Bride of the Isles"

Books:

This volume — another of those treasures edited by E. F. Bleiler and published by Dover — has works in it besides Polidori's The Vampyre (including the fragmentary of a novel by Byron that is Polidori's main source), but that makes it all the more valuable; everyone interested in Gothic literature should own this book:

Essays & Reviews:

"'Prey to some cureless disquiet:' Polidori's Queer Vampyre at the Margins of Romanticism"

By Mair Rigby. [Romanticism on the Net]

"John Polidori."